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Wikipedia:Village pump (miscellaneous)/Archive 51

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Village pump (miscellaneous) archive  

This page contains discussions that have been archived from Village pump (miscellaneous).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

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Turn redlinks pink for breast cancer awareness month

In recognition of breast cancer awareness month, we should turn our redlinks pink during October. What do you think? RO(talk) 16:18, 13 October 2015 (UTC)

Um, no. That's got nothing to do with building an encyclopedia. --Jakob (talk) aka Jakec 16:41, 13 October 2015 (UTC)
@Rationalobserver: How about encouraging people to improve the Breast cancer article so it could be resubmitted for Wikipedia:Good article nominations? GoingBatty (talk) 01:42, 15 October 2015 (UTC)
I agree with Jakec (Jakob). That really has nothing to do with building an encyclopedia.
Richard27182 (talk) 10:34, 18 October 2015 (UTC)

Politics in ITN

"Geoffrey Howe" is honourably mentioned at In the News‍ '​s Recent Deaths ticker when he died. However, there were half of supports and half of opposes. It was temporarily pulled out solely due to poor referencing, but improvements on the article led to reinserting the guy's name. Is Wikipedia or In the News overemphasizing British politics? --This is George Ho actually (Talk) 20:50, 13 October 2015 (UTC)

No. --Jayron32 16:31, 14 October 2015 (UTC)
Why do some people say that either is? --George Ho (talk) 06:34, 16 October 2015 (UTC)
I guess you'll have to ask "some people" that. You could ask them to cite some evidence too while you're at it. Chuntuk (talk) 12:05, 19 October 2015 (UTC)

Twinkle listing invalid speedy criteria.

Hi,

I'm not sure if this is the right place to put this.

Can anyone tell me why Twinkle lists criteria that don't apply to certain namespaces? For example, it lists G1 and G2 when I use it on user pages, but neither criteria applies to user pages. It doesn't list the user page criteria on articles, so I'm wondering why it lets me tag user pages with these invalid (for user pages) criteria?

Thanks

Adam9007 (talk) 22:11, 18 October 2015 (UTC)

Adam9007, A better place to ask is at WT:TW. -- GB fan 23:31, 18 October 2015 (UTC)
@GB fan:Thanks, By the way, you declining speedy for a user page I nominated is the reason I'm asking this! It wouldn't have happened if the invalid criteria was not listed, as I missed the part where it said it doesn't apply to user pages. It seems I shall have it read the policies more carefully than relying on Twinkle in future. Adam9007 (talk) 23:42, 18 October 2015 (UTC)
I figured that out. -- GB fan 23:50, 18 October 2015 (UTC)

Edit filter 731

Special:AbuseFilter/731 is very odd. It disallows writing about the descendants of Israelites in Namespace4. The description says this is for the Reference Desk, but Namespace-4 is much bigger than the reference desk. Indeed it disallows editing the wikiprojects because Namespace-4 is the Wikipedia-namespace. As for the reason why I'm being so circuitous about this, the Village Pump is also in Namespace-4 and thus I cannot actually write the terms disallowed (German: Juden; French: Juif; but not in English), as they are disallowed here as well.

This seems to be a very bad idea for a filter, if it cannot be restricted to the Reference Desk, then it is very problematic, as it restricts editing for all Wikipedia-namespace pages, including those that are specifically about these topics, where one would expect to be able to use the term that the project page is about in discussions about the topic.

-- 70.51.44.60 (talk) 04:06, 19 October 2015 (UTC)

You might want to make this comment at WP:Edit filter/Noticeboard. --Izno (talk) 11:16, 21 October 2015 (UTC)
FWIW the filter has been changed to specifically target the reference desk rather than the whole of a namespace. Sam Walton (talk) 12:12, 21 October 2015 (UTC)

Applicability of templates - seeking opinions

CHiPs is an article about a television series that ended 32 years ago. One of the actors in that series was Bruce Jenner, who is now Caitlyn Jenner. It has, like many others, been targeted by some editors for changes given Jenner revealing that she is now a woman. An editor recently added some templates to the talk page that seem out of place.[1][2] I can't find any evidence of sanctions that apply to this page that warrant inclusion of the {{sanctions}} template, and the "content" that the second template refers to is Bruce Jenner (now Caitlyn Jenner) as Officer Steve McLeish (1981–1982) and a partial sentence that says Erik Estrada was replaced by Jenner Given the extremely minimal references to Jenner in the article, and the seeming lack of any actual sanctions that apply to it, I don't see any justification for including the templates, but I am seeking opinions from other editors before removing them. The editor who added them has already edit-warred at the article, so this action seems prudent. --AussieLegend (✉) 04:13, 19 October 2015 (UTC)

No takers? --AussieLegend (✉) 13:10, 23 October 2015 (UTC)

Google custom searches and the spam-blacklist

Google Custom Search is a facility offered by Google to search only certain sites or parts of sites. It's blocked on m:spam blacklist (under \bgoogle\..{1,5}/cse\b) primarily because an option is available for AdSense revenues to be kicked back to the link creator. Fine so far.

A series of requests have come into MediaWiki talk:Spam-whitelist requesting whitelisting for some CSE pages, in order to conduct federated searches or to search a certain subset of sites for sources for certain types of articles.

I haven't processed any of these because I'm not sure what the right way to handle them is. On the one hand, the link can still be shared on-wiki (just not clicked) by using <nowiki> tags, the links will not be used in the mainspace, and the engines are opaque and neither say what is being searched nor if there is kickback commission going on. On the other, it is probably fairly harmless and the requests are from trusted users.

Should CSEs be whitelisted and linking allowed on the spam-whitelist?

Tagging User:Czar, User:Nikkimaria, User:Diego, User:Beetstra, and User:Ocaasi who have been involved in various discussions of the subject at various times. Stifle (talk) 08:38, 21 October 2015 (UTC)

@Stifle: Yes, they should be whitelisted when coming from a properly established requester, and with a properly written request (why is it needed and where). These links are of use to Project-space etc. (and they have been whitelisted for that). I do not think that these links should ever appear in content space (or in templates that are used in content space).
What precipitated the blacklisting not just that these links are at the core of Search Engine Optimisation (clicking the link lets Google know that 'you are interested in the result', counting towards the page ranking of the results; following the links also counts towards the page ranking of the result that is chosen), but also that it can, with some effort, be used as a redirect (the 'I'm feeling lucky' button on Google does something similar; linking the google search result link is another variety): make sure that your custom search gives as only result the page that you want to click on. The abuse of redirect sites is well known (and redirect sites are even blacklisted pre-emptively), this is another version of that (with an added 'SEO bonus').
All these links from Google have been blacklisted, and, for content, there is always the original link; for custom searches in project space however the only solution is selective whitelisting. --Dirk Beetstra T C 09:14, 21 October 2015 (UTC)
Related question, what about googleusercontent.com? It's used in lots of places and I've seen it used in creative ways. Ravensfire (talk) 16:41, 26 October 2015 (UTC)
What does it actually do? Stifle (talk) 09:37, 28 October 2015 (UTC)

@Dirk Beetstra: Did you see Ravensfire's comment above, and their "replaced with a google cache" comment at MediaWiki talk:Spam-blacklist#infosecinstitute.com? It appears googleusercontent.com can be used to evade the blacklist entry. Johnuniq (talk) 09:39, 29 October 2015 (UTC)

That is going to be interesting then - if there is evidence of such abuse, we would have to blacklist this globally. How .. legitimate is the good use of it, are those the rare self-published sources which could be used as a primary reference? --Dirk Beetstra T C 09:55, 29 October 2015 (UTC)
Maybe just take out the webcache .. that one seems useless to me, since it is a cache it is not an 'archive', and likely temporary. --Dirk Beetstra T C 09:59, 29 October 2015 (UTC)
  • Back to the original question, is there any opposition to whitelisting the custom search engines from trusted users to use solely in projectspace? My request has been sitting since July. czar 05:32, 18 November 2015 (UTC)

Hi all, pursuant to a discussion we had here a few weeks ago, a new RfC is up to determine what our logo will be when we hit five million articles. Please cast your votes! Ed [talk] [majestic titan] 19:02, 21 October 2015 (UTC)

We hit it, it's up, but the main page at www.wikipedia.org still says 4,999,000. Mathglot (talk) 19:02, 1 November 2015 (UTC)

Downsizing y-axis of bar chart

How can one downsize the y-axis of the left wikitable, called "Number of illegal migrants entering Hungary in 2015" to 12,500 but keep the overall height of the table so that the individual bars appear larger. Currently, the latest bars are almost invisible now that Hungary has successfully sealed off its border and the number of illegal migrants has plummeted from thousands to a few dozen only. Thanks in advance Gun Powder Ma (talk) 13:08, 22 October 2015 (UTC)

You might need to talk to User:קיפודנחש (Kipod) about how Module:Chart works. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 18:23, 23 October 2015 (UTC)
unfortunately, i can't think of a way to do this, without some code changes. interestingly, just "trimming" the outlier value (10046) to 10000, will change the scale top to 10000 instead of 15000. as it is, the module insists that the scale will always top with a "round" number, and it believes that the smallest "round" number it can use in this case is 15,000. קיפודנחש (aka kipod) (talk) 18:22, 25 October 2015 (UTC)

Translated article "Disputed"

I have translated into Russian Russian involvement in the Syrian Civil War (slightly abridged) keeping in the translation the sources from the original article. The translated article was marked as {{Disputed}} by another Russian editor on the grounds that I cannot certify the sources myself.

My question is: Can the factual accuracy of an article be undisputed in one language and challenged in another? Please note that I translated the article practically word to word using the Translate (GoogleTrans) tool (see also here)?. What is the general practice?
I can imagine situation when indisputable sources in Russian project may be considered as disputable in English taking into consideration general dependance of Russian media from the government, but how it can be in the opposite direction? What is international experience in this matter if any?
NB: This topic was discussed here. — Сергей Олегович (talk) 17:39, 22 October 2015 (UTC)

My guess is that if you machine translated it, maybe the translation has introduced a factual inaccuracy. Since it's a problem on the Russian project we can't really help here, other than general observations. On English Wikipedia, there is no requirement for reliable sources to be in English, only that the information can be verified, but again the Russian Wikipedia might have different rules. You should seek out the Russian equivalent of the reliable sources noticeboard, if they have one. Ivanvector 🍁 (talk) 17:45, 22 October 2015 (UTC)
This seems to be their policy: ru:Википедия:Авторитетные источники. I don't read the language though. Ivanvector 🍁 (talk) 17:50, 22 October 2015 (UTC)

A barnstar to all of you

  The Original Barnstar
This is to every editor. Happy five millionth. You are wonderful people and this is a great project. All things considered, this experiment is going very well. Thank you from me, someone who uses this encyclopedia a lot. Anna Frodesiak (talk) 22:59, 23 October 2015 (UTC)

(No need to reply or anything. This is just what people call a "shout-out" or something.) Anna Frodesiak (talk) 22:59, 23 October 2015 (UTC)

  • No need to reply, but I want to, simply to say that You Rock, Anna! Oiyarbepsy (talk) 03:11, 30 October 2015 (UTC)

Is my draft (Draft:SkyWatcher) verifiable?

I've just created an article draft, Draft:SkyWatcher, and I'd like to know if it is verifiable or not. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Luis150902 (talk • contribs) 09:38, 24 October 2015 (UTC) @Luis150902:Not with the sources you provided. User-contributed and directory-style sites do not establish notability for a topic, because they are no discriminating. User-contributing sites can include anything and directory-style sites try to include everything. Github and Sourceforge are both user-contributed sites that generally allow any programming project to be listed. You need to find sources that don't list just anything, and don't exist to promote the project. Oiyarbepsy (talk) 03:10, 30 October 2015 (UTC)

Thanks.--Luis150902 (talk | contribs) 21:20, 30 October 2015 (UTC)

Jaguars

can someone please look at my request at Wikipedia:Reference desk/Entertainment. --74.130.133.1 (talk) 16:14, 24 October 2015 (UTC)--74.130.133.1 (talk) 16:14, 24 October 2015 (UTC)

Category backlog?

I moved an article from one cat to another one several hours ago [3]. However, for me it still shows up in the old cat and does not show up in the new one. Another example is Air Astana destinations, which apparently Cyberbot still sees as AfDed [4] though the template was removed long time ago. That looks similar to the Commons disaster when a week ago it had a backlog of a million of files not showing up because the categories failed to update. Are my examples smth similar? If this is the case, we should immediately suspend all speedy deletions of empty categories - since they in fact might be populated. It does not see to be a caching issue, at least I tried to purge.--Ymblanter (talk) 02:56, 27 October 2015 (UTC)

The bot is looking at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Pages in Category:Lists of airline destinations which still has all those pages nevertheless at that time. Several hours seems long but I think that's not unusual. Did you purge the category page or the article page? The article pages needs to be pursued as I recall. CSD here requires four days of non-population and I do plenty of empty category review and deletion and it's very rarely an issue. I do check Special:WantedCategories reguarly and you'll find categories deleted that get re-populated later so those I restore. I don't think it's a big enough problem to delay all of CSD but maybe you can propose delaying C1 to more than four days. -- Ricky81682 (talk) 04:31, 27 October 2015 (UTC)
Thanks. At the time I am writing this none of the two issues has been fixed. Purging both article and category page does not work for me. I will monitor it a bot longer, but I am not sure whether this is a global issue or just smth particular with these two articles.--Ymblanter (talk) 16:06, 27 October 2015 (UTC)
Ushat has been solved, so that I assume this is an isolated problem.--Ymblanter (talk) 20:54, 27 October 2015 (UTC)

Getting notices for things I did?

Hi everybody. Earlier today I created the article Merry Go Boy and linked it to several other articles, including three related ones that I also created. I got notices that the MGB article had been linked to the others created by me, and now I'm wondering why. I know they got linked, because I did it. Does the computer system simply generate such notices without knowing who created which article or what? Thanks, White Arabian mare (Neigh) 16:00, 27 October 2015 (UTC)White Arabian mare

I don't know, but User:Quiddity (WMF) might be able to tell us. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 18:54, 30 October 2015 (UTC)
I guess if you have this option enabled, it does not care indeed who created articles.--Ymblanter (talk) 18:58, 30 October 2015 (UTC)
@White Arabian mare:, There was a bug with this last week, phab:T116485. It was fixed on Enwiki as of Thursday (yesterday), and should no longer give notifications for our own linking activity. Sorry about the confusion and reply-delay. Quiddity (WMF) (talk) 19:28, 30 October 2015 (UTC)

Thanks, I noticed that I didn't get the notices for another article I did yesterday. White Arabian mare (Neigh) 19:36, 30 October 2015 (UTC)White Arabian mare

Problem with maps

The following maps are examples of a problem that has recently occured with places moving south. I have no idea how to solve the problem.

For example the Cornish Pirates ground is now situated in Mount's Bay. See the map at 2015–16 RFU Championship.

Other examples are 2015–16 English Premiership (rugby union) and 2015–16 Premier League.

Many thanks. Jowaninpensans (talk) 18:44, 27 October 2015 (UTC)

@Jowaninpensans: The error seems to be fixed after this revert. The affected pages may need to be purged. -- John of Reading (talk) 21:52, 27 October 2015 (UTC)

Watchlist and your opinion

Please watchlist Wikipedia:Requests for adminship/Optional RfA candidate poll and drop by to give your views. Thank you kindly. Anna Frodesiak (talk) 00:00, 28 October 2015 (UTC)

Wikidata descriptions

Hello, apologies for the delayed notice, but this is headsup that, on the mobile version, Wikidata search results will be showing underneath the article name while searching. This has already been active on beta for a while, how it works is that for a person on their mobile device, when they start typing in the search item, the description will show underneath each item like the example in the image.

 
Wikidata showing in search results on English Wikipedia while searching for the word "Alexandria"

. Thanks--Melamrawy (WMF) (talk) 11:29, 29 October 2015 (UTC)

Number of new article submissions to Wikipedia

How many new articles are submitted every day, week, or month? Of these, how many are accepted to creation? Evoapps (talk) 01:56, 30 October 2015 (UTC)

Hard to say. Wikipedia:Size of Wikipedia has some information on the growth of Wikipedia over time. However, most new articles aren't submitted through the Wikipedia:Articles for creation process. The AFC process is an optional process we direct new users towards to help them learn the ins-and-outs of Wikipedia so they create proper articles the first few times. Most articles are simply just created. Any user is allowed and invited to just create an article whenever they want, as long as they accept that the article will be deleted if it isn't up to minimum standards. So, if you're looking for the number of new articles every month, try WP:STATS or Wikipedia:Size of Wikipedia. If you want the small subset of articles created through the AFC process, see Category:AfC submissions by date and hunt around. You can probably work it out for yourself. --Jayron32 02:06, 30 October 2015 (UTC)

Photos of Patrickroque1 - Some seems to be de minimis rather than "Do Not Copy to Commons"

I made checks on some photos of Special:ListFiles/Patrickroque01, especially on some places in , and I am feeling confused whether they are not transferrable to Commons (because of no freedom of panorama in the Philippines) or either de minimis or the work is ineligible for copyright. An administrator adds the Do not copy to Commons tag without double-checking whether an copyrighted architectural or art work is only incidental or not ineligible for copyright protection. I want someone to check on most of his images, mostly depicting places in Metro Manila with several buildings appearing on the image, whether they are de minimis or ineligible for copyright. — Preceding unsigned comment added by TagaSanPedroAko (talk • contribs) 16:46, 1 November 2015 (UTC)

5 million articles

Many wishes from el-wikipedia for the 5 million articles! --FocalPoint (talk) 20:02, 1 November 2015 (UTC)

New news digest

Hello all,

The Wikimedia Foundation has just published a digest of community news on its blog. This will be a new weekly feature and aims to supplement already-existing community news outlets. The premiere edition features a story on Wiki Loves Africa and a list of short news items, all translated from English into seven languages.

Please pass it around! If you have news that you'd like be included next week, please send it directly to me or drop links into the new post's Meta page. Ed Erhart (WMF) (talk) 19:23, 31 October 2015 (UTC)

@Ed Erhart (WMF): Is there a stable URL for news proposals that will not change every week? --AKlapper (WMF) (talk) 18:22, 1 November 2015 (UTC)
@AKlapper (WMF): I've set up this Meta page—thanks, Whatamidoing (WMF)—and will be creating a separate tip line page (possibly with CE as a joint effort) for people who don't want to edit the digest directly. Ed Erhart (WMF) (talk) 20:15, 2 November 2015 (UTC)

Donated artwork mini-project

We could really use a few participants to contact organizations. Please see:

Anna Frodesiak (talk) 06:23, 2 November 2015 (UTC)

RFC Are these sources the same?

The RFC asks if two sources are the same and if we should remove sources that come to the same conclusions. Please help by providing uninvolved editor comments. AlbinoFerret 19:27, 3 November 2015 (UTC)

Glad red links are showing in mobile

I previously started this thread about the issue of red links not showing in the mobile version. I was happy to recently see that they were working now. User:Melamrawy_(WMF), thanks and please send my thanks to whoever helped make that happen. Biosthmors (talk) pls notify me (i.e. {{U}}) while signing a reply, thx 00:55, 4 November 2015 (UTC)

For what it's worth Melamrawy, I see you said you'd keep me posted,[5] but I never heard anything back. Then again, having the problem fixed is better than just hearing back anyhow. =) Best. Biosthmors (talk) pls notify me (i.e. {{U}}) while signing a reply, thx 00:58, 4 November 2015 (UTC)
Oh, hey Biosthmors, you are welcome, I didn't personally fix anything though, I just poked people about it. Feel free to drop a line on the task or thank Florian :) then, lets make all those red links blue. Now :) ----Melamrawy (WMF) (talk) 12:34, 4 November 2015 (UTC)

Give out Deletion to Quality Awards and log at Hall of Fame

Please see Wikipedia:Bot_requests#Give_out_Deletion_to_Quality_Awards.

A one-time-run would be totally acceptable here.

Is there any way either a bot or someone with a user script or automated or semi-automated skills, can help out here ?

Thank you,

— Cirt (talk) 03:37, 4 November 2015 (UTC)

What to do when "to include" is used as a synonym for "including"

There is a phrase I find jarring, when I read it in US DoD documents, that I saw had crept into some of our articles.

DoD documents routinely use the phrase "to include" where everyone else would use "including". The wikipedia article on the M1117 Armored Security Vehicle currently says: "As of mid-2007, 1,729 vehicles were delivered or under contract with many being dispersed not just to MPs but numerous other military units to include the Iraqi National Police."

Is this DoD phrase even proper English? Does the DoD have their own style guide that requires using "to include", instead of "including"?

Is there any reason someone shouldn't change ever bad instance of the use of the phrase "to include", to "including", whenever they come across one? Geo Swan (talk) 17:11, 26 October 2015 (UTC)

I don't think so. "to include" is a future form I'd only use in proposals for something yet to happen. I suppose "delivered or under contract" has an element of the future, but even so I'd change it. Johnbod (talk) 17:39, 26 October 2015 (UTC)
I agree. The word including is the "present progressive" form of the verb to include. It's use in a future tense might be technically incorrect, even if understood by anyone reading it. Of course, the use above confuses the issue even further, given that the stat was current eight years ago, and that future tense use of to include (back then) refers to a time-frame that is now in the past. Etamni | ✉ | ✓  04:07, 5 November 2015 (UTC)

Elizabeth II

Assuming that Elizabeth II is viewed by the world as first & foremost the Queen of the United Kingdom. Should this be reflected throughout Elizabeth II related articles? GoodDay (talk) 07:18, 1 November 2015 (UTC)

This sound clip

Contemporary worship music has a paragraph that includes the words "This sound clip". I don't know if there is a sopund clip somewhere, but the article needs something to indicate where the sound clip is, or that it doesn't have one. There are tags all over the article, but it obviously needs at least one more.— Vchimpanzee • talk • contributions • 20:18, 4 November 2015 (UTC)

So I went through the history and found Strength will rise (Everlasting God). How should it be used? I'm at home and going to Youtube is next to impossible.— Vchimpanzee • talk • contributions • 21:50, 4 November 2015 (UTC)

Sources needed

I have tried to ask for sources for the following issues: [[6]] Since I did not get any response for over a week now, I'd like to ask the same over here. Could anybody help me out on this? I'm limited by a white-list so it's impossible for me to gain sources myself... So, anybody...please? Oxygene7-13 (talk) 16:36, 6 November 2015 (UTC)

Appetite_for_Destruction#Album_cover has sources which could be moved over. --Jayron32 17:23, 6 November 2015 (UTC)
Would somebody be so nice to take the effort? Oxygene7-13 (talk) 17:26, 6 November 2015 (UTC)
@Oxygene7-13 and Jayron32:   Done - copied from Appetite for Destruction and Yesterday and Today and trimmed. GoingBatty (talk) 06:17, 7 November 2015 (UTC)

Nominations for the 2015 English Wikipedia Arbitration Committee elections are open

Nominations for the 2015 English Wikipedia Arbitration Committee elections are officially open. The nomination period runs from Sunday 00:00, 8 November (UTC) until Tuesday 23:59, 17 November (UTC). Editors interested in running should review the eligibility criteria listed at the top of Wikipedia:Arbitration Committee Elections December 2015/Candidates then create a candidate page following the instructions there. Mike V • Talk 00:09, 8 November 2015 (UTC)

Need help rollbacking

Please help rollback changes made by 175.194.129.142 on Pump It Up Fiesta 2. The anon make multiple changes so it's hard to simply undo his revisions. Thanks in advance. --Kurniasan (talk) 15:07, 7 November 2015 (UTC)

@Kurniasan: Please read Help:Reverting. In short, click on any particular revision in a page history click edit, click save page. Rollback is just a limited form of reversion that can only reverts contiguous edits by the same user (and may only be used for clear vandalism).--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 14:01, 8 November 2015 (UTC)
The anon removes a huge list from the article without stating a clear reason. Isn't that consider as a vandalism? If you have time looking at the history or the article, the latest revisions was done by the same anon, so it's possible to perform a rollback, but undoing would be tedious since the anon removes other contents before finally removing the huge list. --Kurniasan (talk) 18:43, 8 November 2015 (UTC)
@Kurniasan: You're not understanding your power – a power an IP possesses on their first edit; more powerful than rollback. You don't need my help or anyone's to do this. You're asking for a lock pick when I'm telling you, you have the master key. You can revert the edits (not involving the undo button) to any revision you want to—10 edits back; 50, 700; to any revision. Rollback is just a gimmick. It's about two seconds faster than a manual revert but is limited to contiguous edits by the same user. You do not need rollback and there is no tedium involved. You just need to understand how to do a revert. Follow these steps, which I stated in my first response but I'll state more fully:
  • Go to the page history;
  • click on the date of the last good version you think the article should be at
  • click edit this page;
  • enter an edit summary and click save page.
You're done. Best regards--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 11:50, 9 November 2015 (UTC)

Broken link

Hello

I come from the Wikipedia in French and I have a problem with a broken link on Nexus (magazine) : Stephen Roth Institute for the Study of Contemporary Antisemitism and Racism. Annual Reports 1997: Australia. Accessed 3 January 2013

The link is broken and I cannot find this document on the web. On wp.fr, we have wikiwix archives on links, but this one gives a 404 error and I don't know if wp.en has archives and how to enable them.

Thnak you for your answers and please tell me if I didn't post in the right section. Regards, Ѕÿϰדα×₮ɘɼɾ๏ʁ You talkin' to me? 08:33, 8 November 2015 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by SyntaxTerror (talk • contribs)

I've fixed the dead link. You can find it archived at https://web.archive.org/web/20130818073930/http://www.tau.ac.il/Anti-Semitism/asw97-8/australia.html -- Ϫ 11:56, 8 November 2015 (UTC)
Also, what is "wikiwix" and how does it work? -- Ϫ 11:58, 8 November 2015 (UTC)
Thank you very much for this quick answer.
Wikiwix is a digital library like Internet Archive, you can have more info here I think : http://archive.wikiwix.com (I don't really know much about this). Regards, Ѕÿϰדα×₮ɘɼɾ๏ʁ You talkin' to me? 13:15, 8 November 2015 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by SyntaxTerror (talk • contribs)

Wikiproject Erasmus Prize Winners

Dear fellow wikipedians,

Wikipedia has been awarded the Erasmus Prize 2015. This prize is awarded annually to a person or institution that has made an exceptional contribution to culture, society or social science. The King of the Netherlands will present the award on 25 November. This will create media attention which will hopefully result in plenty of new volunteers. Prior to the award ceremony we would like to write and improve articles on former Erasmus Prize winners. All 80 former laureates should be notable enough to merit an article.

Please join the project and help us provide our fellow laureates with articles.

Sincerely, FrankTMeijer and Taketa (talk) 21:17, 8 November 2015 (UTC)

Wow! Congrats Wikipedia! -- Ϫ 01:28, 9 November 2015 (UTC)

Competing tutorials

Hello, I'm going to be teaching new users to use Visual Editor system and noticed that it has an in depth user guide and quirky Adventure, but no intermediate tutorial. I'm thinking of adapting the guide to a quick Introduction_to-like format. I am concious, however, that there are already a lot of competing tutorials and introductions. Have there been any efforts in the last few years to consolidate them at all? Any advice on creating a simple one for VE? T.Shafee(Evo﹠Evo)talk 12:27, 5 November 2015 (UTC)

Tutorials and their 90-day views via stats.grok.se

Wikipedia:Introduction - 81k
Wikipedia:Contributing to Wikipedia - 44k
Help:Editing - 38k
Wikipedia:tutorial - 33k
Wikipedia:A_primer_for_newcomers - 19k
Help:Introduction_to_referencing/2  - 16k
Wikipedia:The_Wikipedia_Adventure - 16k
Wikipedia:VisualEditor/User guide - 15k
Wikipedia:Training/Newcomers/Welcome - 12k
Help:Wikipedia:_The_Missing_Manual - 12k
Help:Introduction to policies and guidelines - 10k 

  Started For those interested. I've started a VE tutorial here: help:introduction to editing (VE) and developed a unified template {{intro to}}. T.Shafee(Evo﹠Evo)talk 01:38, 10 November 2015 (UTC)

I need a contingent correction

I'm French and I did an adaptation of my demonstration in French in Flambage corresponding to your page buckling, so I created the page Euler's critical load then I added 2 links towards this new page in the page buckling. Could somebody check about my English, AND more difficult about the mathematical notations? In this situation, it's usefull to know about this peculiar subject. I thank tou for your help.--Jojodesbatignoles (talk) 15:57, 7 November 2015 (UTC)

There is an ongoing discussion of whether Wikipedia articles should include detailed proofs/derivations. The Euler's critical load article is essentially the detailed derivation of a theorem already stated in the article Buckling. Before we spend a lot of work editing the new article, perhaps we should discuss whether it should exist at all. Mgnbar (talk) 13:20, 10 November 2015 (UTC)

Wikipedia The Game About Everything

 
Game box front.

Anybody ever hear of this? Jim.henderson (talk) 05:15, 10 November 2015 (UTC)

I'm personally waiting for Wikiopoly. See User:MER-C/Monopoly. :) --Jules (Mrjulesd) 12:59, 11 November 2015 (UTC)

Wich golf-game is that?

I've played a golf-simulator on a IBM-PS1 when I was young(er) that claimed to have real sound. (during startup the game actually told you this) It must be from the mid 90s and was one of the first games that actually spoke. I have absolutely no idea what the name of this game was so I'd like to ask anybody who thinks to know this game to help me out. Thanx in advance: Oxygene7-13 (talk) 17:28, 7 November 2015 (UTC)

Maybe Links 386 Pro? I think the Wikipedia:Reference desk is where to ask this kind of question. Fences&Windows 22:13, 12 November 2015 (UTC)
Dunno... Doesn't ring a bell though... (and too bad it's a red link) Oxygene7-13 (talk) 11:12, 13 November 2015 (UTC)

The village pump itself

Nothing significant, but I find it odd that none of the specific VP divisions contain a link back to the main WP:VP page. Should one be added somewhere near the top as a courtesy? —⁠烏⁠Γ (kaw) │ 08:25, 13 November 2015 (UTC)

Well, you would only go to the Village Pump main page in order to go to one of its sub pages. And you can already get to them directly by using the links at the top of each sub page. So there isn't really any point in adding a link back to the VP main page. I would guess that that is why none of the VP sub pages contains a link to the VP main page. -- Derek Ross | Talk 21:43, 13 November 2015 (UTC)
I would contend that there is no reason not to, as there are the additional help links and the community template that do promote navigation and reduce redundancy and misdirected discussions. The link could be innocuous, as a minor, natural addition to the phrase "The Foo section of the village pump" introducing each page (oddly, Proposals doesn't have this format). —⁠烏⁠Γ (kaw) │ 07:59, 14 November 2015 (UTC)

Category in need of improvement

Years ago (under a different username), I suggested the articles that are now at "Lists of box office number-one films in the United States." I looked at them recently, only to find some problems with them:

  • For most of 1977-1981, typically only a film's first weekend is known, if even that. No concrete weekend data seems to exist for any films prior to The Godfather.
  • No pre-1982 lists cite any sources.
  • What little is known from before 1982 is well documented on the two most comprehensive box office websites, Box Office Mojo and The Numbers. The data on those sites contradicts that in said articles; I once tried to correct the information, but it was reverted.

These articles are in need of cleanup. Theskinnytypist (talk) 22:55, 13 November 2015 (UTC)

Nothing new here. I presume those are the kinds of articles made before the citations requirements increased and people watching those "know" the right results even without sources. You're also presuming that the information exists online. I'd say most pre-Internet stuff won't be easy to find (relatively, a few hours in a library with find it but not at home I mean). -- Ricky81682 (talk) 23:48, 13 November 2015 (UTC)

E-mail unsubscription?

I am getting already for a week or longer every day, sometimes several times per day, alerts that my e-mail has been unsubscribed due to multiple delivery failures. Verification works every time (basically, I perform it after every alert). My e-mail is corporate. Does anyone else get it, or is this a problem at my end? Thanks.--Ymblanter (talk) 08:12, 14 November 2015 (UTC)

What makes you think it is related to Wikipedia? Do you think it is for a Wikipedia-related mailing list? I suggest asking at WP:VPT with some details (not including any personal information such as email address). It is always useful to quote some exact text from the message—often ideas are found by using Google to see anywhere else people are talking about such an error, or a developer might see where the text comes from. In general terms, if a mailing list has mail to send you but the mail cannot be delivered for whatever reason, the list marks you as "bouncing" and will send a warning that the mailing list subscription will be terminated if you don't confirm with an email reply. There may be email filtering rules that you have no control over (as in corporate email) that drop mail from what is regarded as a dubious source. Johnuniq (talk) 08:47, 14 November 2015 (UTC)
Thanks, I will ask there. I though it is related to Wikipedia because I get Wikipedia alerts (the notification system at the top of every page), and I did not get any complaints about my e-mail recently from anybody else.--Ymblanter (talk) 09:15, 14 November 2015 (UTC)
Posted at VPT.--Ymblanter (talk) 09:19, 14 November 2015 (UTC)

Where to ask questions about OUTING policy?

Where to ask questions about OUTING policy and if certain actions constitutes OUTING or not? Which noticeboard would be the most appropriate?--MyMoloboaccount (talk) 22:26, 14 November 2015 (UTC)

That's a pretty good question but I do wonder why you're the one asking it, since it is you who is constantly referring to other users' supposed, imagined or alleged place of residence or nationality. Which is in fact borderline outing. Are you trying to find out if it's okay for you to discuss other people's supposed, imagined or alleged nationality/ethnicity/place of residence without getting into trouble? If so, let me answer that for you. It ain't. And not just because of WP:OUTING but also because that - if done purposefully, repeatedly and with the purpose of poisoning the well and stifling discussion - can be taken as disruptive personal attacks and WP:BATTLEGROUND. Volunteer Marek  22:58, 14 November 2015 (UTC)

Need help with images

 
Scale of justice

I need help from an editor who has experience with creating images such as this one of a scale. Please ping me or respond on my talk page. -- BullRangifer (talk) 03:50, 15 November 2015 (UTC)

You may want to reach out to the Graphics Lab too. --MASEM (t) 04:24, 15 November 2015 (UTC)
Thanks! -- BullRangifer (talk) 06:34, 15 November 2015 (UTC)

WLE 2015 Writing Contest

Hello. I want to invite you to participate in this writing contest about natural sites of Spain and Portugal till December 6, 2015. You can join it in every language. More information in meta:WLE 2015 Writing Contest/en. Thanks. --Millars (talk) 22:56, 15 November 2015 (UTC)

Is ITN becoming a propaganda tool?

All-Russia Athletic Federation is featured as bolded target in the Main Page, but the article may has some issues. I proposed "pull", but no one objected it being part of the Main Page. UFC 193 is treated with disdain just because it's a sport? Look at UFC 193; there have been improvements. As for Russian sports page, I have to clean it up, but how does a small page like that become featured? Is Wikipedia going against Russia despite quality issues? --George Ho (talk) 01:38, 16 November 2015 (UTC)

You're seriously accusing ITN of being a propaganda tool because your pet sports story hasn't been posted promptly enough? AlexTiefling (talk) 03:00, 16 November 2015 (UTC)
I didn't nominate the sports article. And I didn't mean it that way either. Why are my words becoming more confusing and then twisted? --George Ho (talk) 03:06, 16 November 2015 (UTC)

Look, never mind what I said. The sports page won't gain consensus anyway. Even posting story of ban on Russia would have been less logical if I hadn't been pressured to clean it up. George Ho (talk) 03:11, 16 November 2015 (UTC)

Hello

Did Haystak really died? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 109.185.175.84 (talk) 17:34, 15 November 2015 (UTC)

Our article says so, but there is no reliable source, Pastebin is not something to trust. And no news sites report it. I will be reverting this until there is better evidence of this. Graeme Bartlett (talk) 09:35, 16 November 2015 (UTC)

Are active editors growing again?

I remember recently seeing a graphic or report showing active editors on the rise again. Can anyone help me find that again? It sure would be nice to shove in the faces of those continuing to talk about our "decline". Stevie is the man! Talk • Work 20:53, 16 November 2015 (UTC)

I don't know what you saw but https://stats.wikimedia.org/EN/TablesWikipediaEN.htm has lots of data. Activity varies by time of year so comparing the same month in different years is more meaningful than consecutive months. PrimeHunter (talk) 12:07, 17 November 2015 (UTC)
Thanks, that will do. I remember seeing a graph of this, but I can see from the chart that compared to a year ago, we're seeing an uptick in active editing. Stevie is the man! Talk • Work 13:37, 17 November 2015 (UTC)

The 3 categories Economies, Economic systems and Economics

Regarding the categories Economies, Economic systems and Economics: the 1st is subcategory of the 2nd, the 2nd is subcategory of the 3rd and the 3rd is subcategory of the 1st. Is this phenomenon acceptable?SoSivr (talk) 17:00, 11 November 2015 (UTC)

It's... economical. Praemonitus (talk) 17:10, 11 November 2015 (UTC)
In terms of graph theory: the category graph of Wikipedia is currently not acyclic.SoSivr (talk) 17:52, 11 November 2015 (UTC)
Wikipedia:Categorization#Subcategorization (shortcut: WP:SUBCAT) says: "Category chains formed by parent–child relationships should never form closed loops; that is, no category should be contained as a subcategory of one of its own subcategories."
—Wavelength (talk) 19:23, 12 November 2015 (UTC)

Thanks for the tip, SoSivr. Fixed, by taking Economics out of Economies. (The first is a mode of study or analysis, the second a set of examples, cases, and related lingo. The first is not a subcategory of the second generally.) Please feel free to sharpen your taxonomic claws further by figuring out what the category Society belongs inside or outside of. :) -- econterms (talk) 18:51, 14 November 2015 (UTC)

@Econterms: hi, what exactly do you mean with the expression "belongs inside or outside of"?SoSivr (talk) 10:45, 15 November 2015 (UTC)
By "inside of" I meant "is a page or subcategory in the category of," and by "outside of" I meant "isn't in the category of." Above I took the view that Category:Economics doesn't belong in the Category:Economies. If we look above Category:Economies, to see what it's categorized in, we see it's in Category:Society ... which is plausible ... but Category:Society is a subcategory of Category:Humans and Category:World which look like mistakes to me. (Society isn't just a human or a group of humans, and need not be made up of humans at all, and a society need not be global nor on this or any world.) But do I want to be editing Category:Fundamental categories, or do I want to let people inclined toward philosophy and set theory and linguistics do it? Hmmmm. I invite you to act on it and if not ... maybe I will ... -- econterms (talk) 22:37, 16 November 2015 (UTC)
As far as I know, economics is a science. Economies refers to specific economies or economic sectors, although some economy systems are included too. --NaBUru38 (talk) 19:12, 18 November 2015 (UTC)

Arbitration Committee marginalising community

At Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case/Arbitration enforcement 2 the community is being marginalised by the committee.

  1. Almost all contributions to the case have been ghettoised on to the talk page.
  2. No workshop will take place.
  3. No threaded discussions are allowed.

It is ironic that this is taking place on a case which is largely a result of the Committee's own previous actions in the Gamergate, Gender Gap, Gun Contol, Lightbreather and AE1 cases, as well as their severely misjudged de-sysop of Yngvadottir.

We have elections coming up, it is true. But can we hold these people to account? They seem to be a law unto themselves, happy to act outside their competence and jurisdiction, and happy to ignore consensus.

All the best: Rich Farmbrough, 05:14, 8 November 2015 (UTC).

Nominations are open for 9 out of 15 Committee spots so there's plenty of opportunity for accountability. I've not seen any evidence of Committee members acting in bad faith, even if you or I (or anyone else) happen to disagree with specific outcomes or processes. And as I've a few times now, I encourage anyone who really wants to bring new ideas or approaches to Arbcom to stand for election and see how they go. -- Euryalus (talk) 05:51, 8 November 2015 (UTC)
  Done All the best: Rich Farmbrough, 20:23, 8 November 2015 (UTC).
It would be much easier to hold them accountable if they were required to deliberate on-wiki, and I think we'd get more reasonable decisions from a transparent ArbCom. Everyking (talk) 07:38, 8 November 2015 (UTC)
Yes, there is a problem with the community having to, in effect, read tea leaves in order to figure out what is happening off-wiki. It is difficult to know which members to re-elect, and which not to re-elect, when so much of the decision-making is presented as a fait accompli, without really knowing which Arbitrator supported or opposed what. --Tryptofish (talk) 16:44, 8 November 2015 (UTC)
I wouldn't frame it as "marginalizing the community" - but it is clear that they are acting in a manner which threatens their already tenuous position as being respected voices representing the community. One would have thought that after the many fiascoes they have presided over and effectuated this past year, they would be learning and trying to get better, but it seems as if they are deliberately trying to get worse! (which, I would have thought to be an impossible challenge, but one that they seem to be quite capable of achieving.) -- TRPoD aka The Red Pen of Doom 18:12, 8 November 2015 (UTC)
I certainly don't think it is deliberate. It is a result of "panting themselves into a corner" on more than one occasion. And it is not this particular incarnation of the committee alone that has done such things, but "emergency measures" tend to become standard (unthreaded talk-page discussion, for example).
And by increments the divide between Arbs and normal editors is increased: Arbs may make threaded comments on the unthreaded discussions.
All the best: Rich Farmbrough, 18:56, 8 November 2015 (UTC).
In my opinion, much of the problem lies in the structure of how the committee works. For example, the email system creates a situation where, simultaneously, the community feels like decisions are being made in secret and the arbs themselves are made to feel besieged. See, for example: [8], [9], [10]. It's mind-boggling. --Tryptofish (talk) 19:13, 8 November 2015 (UTC)
That level of emails needs a systematic approach. I'm not certain though if that is the level the gatekeepers see, or the level actually to make it onto the list. I suspect the former. All the best: Rich Farmbrough, 20:31, 8 November 2015 (UTC).
  • Hundreds of emails a day is unthinkable. This is a crisis. The system is beyond broken, and needs to fixed quickly. Jusdafax 06:44, 9 November 2015 (UTC)
Yes, User:Jusdafax, it is unthinkable. And luckily that doesn't actually happen (generally not even including the spam that some of us for our sins have to deal with as part of letting legitimate email through). We do get a lot of email but then we are on a number of lists. There's our own list, there's the clerks' list which can be very busy, there's Functionaries which varies a lot - Orangemoody did generate a lot of emails, as have other individual incidents. Checkuser isn't terribly busy but there are several a day, Oversight less. Appeals can be busy and time-consuming and neither Wikipedia:Requests for comment/BASC reform 2014 nor Wikipedia:Requests for comment/Ban appeals reform 2015 came to any conclusion so we are stuck with that until another effort succeeds. So a lot of the email is not about cases. And quite a bit of our own email is trivia - who's going to be around, when something should be done, reminders/nags, requests for help/advice, etc, and email is the most appropriate place for that. Cases certainly take up or should take up most of our time as most require a lot of reading. As for deliberating on-Wiki, I'd say we do a lot of that already. You can usually see us disagreeing over cases during the PD for instance as well as during the case request. Those are real debates. I'm not sure what decisions are made without the Arbs being named - I do recall one where that might have happened but I actually posted it to the appropriate location with the votes. Doug Weller (talk) 13:04, 9 November 2015 (UTC)
A recent example, the functionary changes motion was proposed and voted on in private (although names were given after the decision) where there wasn't especially in this instance a reason to have deliberations secret. Callanecc (talk • contribs • logs) 21:50, 10 November 2015 (UTC)
We could have done that, although it was pretty much a formality. Yunshui announced his retirement from not just ArbCom but Wikipedia to the list. We responded with our regrets and asked him if he wanted to keep the permissions. He said no, to keep it formal we voted on it, and then it was announced. So yes, we could have done it on-Wiki. We weren't trying to keep it a secret. It would take longer on-Wiki and I think take up more of our, email is always faster for something like this, and it wasn't contentious. Personally I'd rather save our time by doing this sort of thing on the list, but I'm open to being persuaded otherwise. It doesn't save a huge amount of time doing it on the list of course, but it all adds up. Doug Weller (talk) 11:32, 11 November 2015 (UTC)
I have a suggestion as to how the Committee could make the community feel less marginalized. There should be a place somewhere on-Wiki, and it doesn't have to be anything conspicuous or subject to endless discussion, where the roll call of off-Wiki votes gets posted after the fact. In other words, there are discussions that the Arbs should best do by email instead of in public, but once a decision is made, there can be a public record of who voted how, and who did not vote. Obviously, there are things on the list that must be treated as confidential, and I can see how it could interfere with frank discussions among Arbs if every initial opinion expressed during discussion was made public, but once a decision has been agreed to, there really isn't anything that is properly private about how members finally voted. Releasing this in public would make the community more trusting of the Committee. And I keep seeing clues that indicate that some Arbs are frustrated by other Arbs not pulling their weight, but the community never finds out the details. If the community sees a record of who fails to vote, that is useful information at election time, and would tend to motivate better functioning of the Committee. --Tryptofish (talk) 17:24, 11 November 2015 (UTC)
  • This case has been a botch from the beginning, and is a paradigmatic example of why ArbCom should state the general issues it intends to address at the beginning of a case. It is grossly disrespectful to the community to expect them to work on the matter in the dark, then dismiss their evidence based on undisclosed criteria as to the scope of the case. ArbCom should not be promoting the waste of contributors' time and efforts. The Big Bad Wolfowitz (aka Hullaballoo) (talk) 18:42, 11 November 2015 (UTC)
  • The GMO case is also going pretty badly. --Tryptofish (talk) 22:14, 15 November 2015 (UTC)
    • I daren't look. All the best: Rich Farmbrough, 17:49, 17 November 2015 (UTC).
      • I wish that I never had. --Tryptofish (talk) 00:50, 18 November 2015 (UTC)
  • ArbCom faces a whole host of problems with itself. It continues to operate against the community, rather than as a partner with it. Too many times I've seen them violate the policies that the community voted in as a construct on their operations. Too many times I've seen them wantonly ignore their own procedures. Too many times I've seen them operate with impunity in ways that dramatically affect the community. There is no oversight, no control, and no way to correct it. I don't view any given arbitrator as the problem (though there are certain candidates in the current election that terrify me), but rather the system we have put in place as failed. As noted by others above, it is very difficult to evaluate the conduct of any one arbitrator, as so much of what they do is behind the scenes. This makes elections a farce, and a useless tool for reform. The issues ArbCom face are insurmountable and they eschew reform attempts. The community is powerless to do anything to correct the problems. The only way I see us getting out of this quagmire is marginalizing ArbCom. --Hammersoft (talk) 16:40, 19 November 2015 (UTC)

100 articles after ten years

In November of 2005, I randomly selected 100 pages for a totally non-scientific survey of article quality. Ten years and 23,000 edits later, I've re-visited those pages to see how they've changed. Twelve of the original 100 have been deleted, while another four have been turned into redirects, leaving 77 articles, 6 disambiguation pages, and one list.

There have been two big success stories in the past decade.

First, sourcing: in November of 2005, only 15% of the articles I examined had sources. Today, footnotes have sprouted all over the place, and 86% of the articles have at least one source of some sort. Not everyone gets the reliable sources policy, though, with one article sourced almost entirely to comic book issues, and another to Baidu Baike.

Second, images with free-content licenses. In 2005, only 24 articles had images, and non-free and unsourced images were almost as common as freely-licensed ones. Today, 57 of the articles are illustrated. The number of free images has increased more than eight-fold, while the number of non-free images has dropped slightly.

Article quality has followed a generally upward trend: of the original articles, 44 were stubs and 20 were one-line substubs. Today, only two of the substubs remain, and almost half of the stubs have been expanded. There seems to be a ceiling to quality, though: in 2005, I did not rank any of the articles as being of "high quality"; today, there still aren't any that I would consider to be of high quality, even by the relaxed standards of 2005. By current standards, none of the original articles ranks above "B-class", and most are rated "C-class" or below.

As I found in the last three times I re-examined these pages, there's no correlation between number of edits and change in quality. The most-edited article (Midfielder, at about 3150 edits since the last check) is largely unchanged in quality, while one of the most-improved (Lichen planus) saw only 429.

And finally, all three Digimon articles in the original set are gone, either deleted or turned into redirects. --Carnildo (talk) 11:15, 12 November 2015 (UTC)

Very interesting: thanks for this! ‑‑YodinT 13:19, 12 November 2015 (UTC)
  • Yes, thanks. Drmies (talk) 15:38, 12 November 2015 (UTC)

I can think of at least two possible interpretations of this result.

  1. The average article has gotten better.
  2. Ten-year-old articles were better than newer articles in 2005 and this has not changed in 2015. What has changed is that the sample is now 100% ten-year-old articles.

--Guy Macon (talk) 17:07, 12 November 2015 (UTC)

There were no ten-year-old articles in 2005, because Wikipedia wasn't around in 1995. ~ ONUnicorn(Talk|Contribs)problem solving 20:14, 12 November 2015 (UTC)
There were a number of 94-year-old articles in 2005, because a lot of articles were copied here from the 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica in the early days of Wikipedia. --Guy Macon (talk) 22:15, 12 November 2015 (UTC)
How did you select the original articles? Cas Liber (talk · contribs) 19:43, 12 November 2015 (UTC)
The original articles were selected randomly - I presume by clicking "Random article" 100 times. bd2412 T 20:17, 12 November 2015 (UTC)
I selected the articles by 100 consecutive clicks on "Random page". --Carnildo (talk) 23:35, 12 November 2015 (UTC)
It might not have been you, but I remember someone doing that with the caveat that Rambot articles were skipped. All the best: Rich Farmbrough, 01:55, 13 November 2015 (UTC).
That was someone else -- my set has two Rambot stubs. There were a number of random-article surveys done around the time, most in the ten- to twenty-article range. --Carnildo (talk) 03:28, 13 November 2015 (UTC)

Ok, my impression is that a great many old articles lie fallow after creation, so I'd be curious if you did it a second time, with a random mix of old and new articles (given there were less than a million in 2005 it should mean the majority will be new) and compare quality then. Cas Liber (talk · contribs) 19:16, 13 November 2015 (UTC)

Same here. I wonder if you took 100 hits of "random article" today and looked back at each one over ten years, most wouldn't exist but it would be interesting. -- Ricky81682 (talk) 23:50, 13 November 2015 (UTC)
Based on my own, unsystematic & occasional review of articles I wrote over 5 years ago (& one or two I wrote as long ago as 2003), except for cosmetic & minor changes many articles never see another edit. I don't know if it's because readers assume the content is complete & correct, or the material requires specialized knowledge or effort to improve upon, or no one has ever read them, let alone cares enough to improve on them. -- llywrch (talk) 22:50, 17 November 2015 (UTC)
Most articles seem to be of such specialized interest that they will likely garner few looks and even fewer edits. When selecting random articles, I see very few that I'd want to bother to improve. That comes in part from knowing how difficult it would be just to find useful sources. Praemonitus (talk) 23:13, 18 November 2015 (UTC)
  • @Llywrch: I had a look at your article creations from ten years ago. I think they're are being seen, based on this very small sample set of 5: [11][12][13][14][15]. Taking a completely wild and unsupportable statistical extrapolation to cover your 1498 article creations, the articles you have created are being viewed ~16k times a day. --Hammersoft (talk) 16:53, 19 November 2015 (UTC)

European hyperlink copyright protection threat to Wikipedia?

According to this Forbes article, an EU plan for copyright reform might make it possible that payment can be exacted from Wikipedia for displaying external links to content of European publishers, something we do in the References sections of countless articles. Is it as bad as it sounds? Do we need to act to keep this from becoming reality?  --Lambiam 11:07, 17 November 2015 (UTC)

Looks like a scare piece. If it were to happen, though, publishers would be queueing up to waive their rights, certainly as far as Wikipedia is concerned. All the best: Rich Farmbrough, 17:47, 17 November 2015 (UTC).

Two options:

  1. We could cheerfully ignore it, Wikipedia servers are located in the US and subject to US law.
  2. We could cheerfully accept it, and drop every link to Europe down a black hole.

I'm not sure which would be more cheerful. They're both delightful otpions. Alsee (talk) 05:15, 18 November 2015 (UTC)

Cheerfully ignore it. If a country wants to block Wikipedia just let them. Wikipedia is not censored and just referring to something is not using it in a material way.
I think Germany and Portugal already do something like this and Google have just dropped any references to a whole bunch of publishing houses in those countries and they are really hurting but for some reason some publishers are still pushing for this. Copyright has gone mad and I would not totally discount them passing this even if it is totally stupid. Dmcq (talk) 13:54, 18 November 2015 (UTC)
It was Germany and Spain - not Portugal - as described at [16]. The US probably does need to strengthen its law though to allow copyright action where someone uses content from another site by framing it in their own pages rather than having them click to go to the other site. As well as robots.txt completely stopping robots I think the default should be to only allow links and fair use and need a special robots.txt command to say use as a resource is allowed - e.g. where a site says you can use a pictures or scripts from their website in your own pages. The whole copyright business about life plus 70 years just makes me want to destroy the whole business though - it is just wrong. Only trademarks should last that long and they possibly should have stronger protection and I'd count Mickey Mouse as a trademark so other people couldn't set up films with him - but the old cartoons would be out of copyright. Dmcq (talk) 14:31, 18 November 2015 (UTC)
The US is party to the Berne convention, so Wikimedia's servers being located in the US does not automatically render us exempt. The risk is not a matter of countries blocking access to Wikipedia, but of private parties suing Wikimedia, which they can do in US civil courts. Pre-Alphabet Google took the German and Spanish precursors quite seriously; today there is no more Google News in Spain – and not merely as a demonstrative move.  --Lambiam 16:01, 18 November 2015 (UTC)
Servers in the US renders us "exempt" in that US courts would throw this claim out on its ass. The US tends to be very aggressive on parts of copyright law, but there are also firmly held limitations. The King of Randomistan could declare that typing his name is copyright infringement, but US courts will ignore that novel interpretation. Google probably delisted Spanish publications 50% to avoid getting sued *in* Spain, and probably 50% because mass-delisting for the country is such an appropriate way to combat that kind of legislation. Stuff like this is why it's good to avoid setting up a multi-national presence. If you have offices in a dozen countries you are subject to lawsuits in a dozen incompatible court systems. Alsee (talk) 22:05, 18 November 2015 (UTC)
I would argue that if this even comes close to passing, we engage with WMF legal to determine what to do, similar to how they engaged with the UK National Portrait Gallery issue. I would guess based on the NPG case that WMF would say "as long as it's valid under US law..." but I can't read their minds. --MASEM (t) 16:46, 19 November 2015 (UTC)

Eyes at Princeton Theological Seminary please

I need another set of eyes at Princeton Theological Seminary please. An editor representing the Princeton Theological Review began attempting to place non-neutral, conflict of interest edits onto the page. I've reverted twice, notified the editor, and reported the account the UAA. Post this, another new account is now trying to push the same information plus more onto the article. I've reverted twice on that page already, and so I'm walking away from it. Other eyes, please. --Hammersoft (talk) 15:23, 19 November 2015 (UTC)

I took a look. Five edits over 18 minutes, two of which were trivial formatting fixes. Setting aside COI concerns, the two links per se look legitimate. The new account did a much better job on NPOV for the link descriptions, if it's the same editor then at least they are improving constructively. I polished it up a bit more. IMO all this needs is for at least one editor to glance in over the next several days. I'll put it on my list for a while, but no promises on how attentive I'll be. Alsee (talk) 18:28, 19 November 2015 (UTC)

Signing the unsigned mass posting from June

Can someone with AWB or some other tool, go around and datestamp the unsigned mass posting [17] made in June 2015 by Another Believer (talk · contribs) ? There are tens or hundreds of WikiProjects that were mass posted to, but all those with automated archival cannot archive that section because it doesn't have a datestamp. This problem can be seen at WT:SPORTS[18], where successive archivebot runs fail to archive this mass posting an event that has since expired. Newer sections have already been archived, yet this message remains [19][20][21]. This occurs in several WikiProjects, so all should have datestamps attached that haven't already had datestamps added or been manually archived or deleted.

-- 70.51.44.60 (talk) 08:23, 10 November 2015 (UTC)

You may try WP:BOTREQUEST as I think would AWB would be terrible since I couldn't see the actual time and date for each post and would have to manually put it in. -- Ricky81682 (talk) 23:52, 13 November 2015 (UTC)
There's no need to have the actual time and date for each post. You could paste the same timestamp into each of them. WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:19, 20 November 2015 (UTC)

Notice of RFC regarding List of massacres in Yugoslavia

RFC located here. Quis separabit? 16:38, 20 November 2015 (UTC)

I have taken down the RFC template. The question was extremely unclear and non-neutral. It would easily be challenged and invalidated on that basis as soon as the opposing-side saw it. I pointed the editor to instructions at WP:Writing_requests_for_comment. I invited them to start a new and improved RFC, hopefully with agreement from both sides on what the question would be. P.S. The article is under full protection. Alsee (talk) 18:42, 20 November 2015 (UTC)

Redirects belonging to Category:Redirects from synonyms

Many of them should be moved to Category:Redirects from alternative scientific names, since they are not linguistic synonyms but taxonomic synonyms, e.g. Arctus pygmaeus, and the alternative scientific name category refers to taxonomic synonyms. I want to move these redirects to the taxonomic synonym category, but I can't do this without your help because they are too many and I don't have much time, so please help me.--RekishiEJ (talk) 08:53, 21 November 2015 (UTC)

RfC: Should the heavy metal music article include a band image in the infobox

There is an RfC on whether the heavy metal music article should include an image of a metal band in the infobox. Please contribute your views at the RfC located here.OnBeyondZebrax • TALK 15:27, 21 November 2015 (UTC)

RfC: Anti-Israel Boycott - Roger Waters in Eagles of Death Metal article

Notice of RfC on Eagles of Death Metal talk page: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Eagles_of_Death_Metal#RfC:_Anti-Israel_Boycott_-_Roger_Waters  :

Is the conflict between Eagles and Death Metal and and the anti-Israel Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) activists (eg Roger Waters) over their performances in Israel, and the band's strong public confrontational statements against BDS and support for Israel relevant. and should be mentioned in the history section? Should the following below be added to this article? prepared by --Moxy (talk) 19:54, 20 November 2015 (UTC) as per Ronreisman previous attempt in wrong location

The band performed at the Barby Club in Tel Aviv, Israel, in spite of pressure from anti-Israeli Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) activists. Roger Waters sent a letter to the band which reportedly demanded that they boycott Israel. Hughes publicly commented on Waters' letter at the Tel Aviv concert, saying "I would never boycott a place like this ... You know what I wrote back? Two words ... Never waste your time worrying about what an asshole thinks about you.” Hughes repeated the obvious two-word profanity to the cheering crowd. During the show he said “I’ve never felt more at home in my life”

"Concert review: The Eagles of Death Metal". Jerusalem Post. Retrieved July 12, 2015.

"Paris attacks: Eagles of Death Metal defied pro-Palestine boycott movement and Roger Waters to play Israel". Retrieved November 20, 2015.

Jesse Hughes, Eagles Of Death Metal Tell BDS And Roger Waters Where To Go, Israel July 12th" youtube.

— User:Ronreisman

Previous talks can bee seen above at Talk:Eagles of Death Metal#Threats to bataclan wording and at Talk:Roger Waters#Conflict with VIctims of November 2015 Paris attacks

Ronreisman (talk) 16:54, 22 November 2015 (UTC)

I took the liberty of correcting the links in the above post Roger (Dodger67) (talk) 17:06, 22 November 2015 (UTC)

Yearly appeal

I got an email this morning, supposedly from Jimmy Wales, asking for a donation.

My email client highlighted it as a possible scam, presumable because links that superficially appeared to go to wikimedia.com actually direct to wikimedia.mkt4477.com.

However, the email addressed me by name and knew how much I donated last year.

On the other hand, there is nothing on the front page about the appeal.

If this is a scam, there needs to be a prominent warning on the front page.

If it isn't a scam there needs to be something obvious on the front page to show that the yearly appeal is in progress. PRL42 (talk) 10:19, 19 November 2015 (UTC)

Based on phab:T114010 this seems authentic, but in my opinion a very bad idea likely to deter donors. Does it really appear to go to wikimedia.com or do you mean wikimedia.org? The former redirects but would create extra confusion for donors. PrimeHunter (talk) 12:16, 19 November 2015 (UTC)
It goes to links.wikimedia.mkt4477.com. I have now ascertained that this is, indeed, genuine, because the ultimate donation page has the same initial url :"https://donate.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:FundraiserLandingPage&country=GB&uselang=en". (It varies after that because there is referrer information for either email or direct access.) It really should not have been sent unless/until there is front page confirmation that the appeal is taking place. And a far better scheme would be if the email simply asked you to go to wikipedia (without a link) and follow donation links from there. PRL42 (talk) 13:15, 19 November 2015 (UTC)
I've left a note on the phab page about this, it seems they've been aware the domain is an issue for a while. Sam Walton (talk) 13:17, 19 November 2015 (UTC)
Thanks for reporting this, PRL42, and Sam Walton for the ping on phab. It is a priority for us to get this fixed as soon as possible as the full December campaign is just around the corner. If you don't mind my asking, can you tell me what email client you use? Thanks again --CCogdill (WMF) (talk) 13:58, 19 November 2015 (UTC)
I use Thunderbird. I presume it's the link that appears as "https://donate.wikimedia.org" that is causing the problem because Thunderbird can see that something that is displaying as a URL does not go (directly) to the displayed site. PRL42 (talk) 16:39, 19 November 2015 (UTC)
Thanks for the reply. We'll follow up, and are hoping to have a fix for the domain issue within a couple of weeks.--CCogdill (WMF) (talk) 11:18, 23 November 2015 (UTC)

hr.wikipedia.org

  Moved to :m:Requests_for_comment/Hard_line_nationalism_on_the_Croatian_Wikipedia

This very very very very inappropriate behavior there. I was blocked merely because of my nationality. I just cleaned up my talk page and that was a reason for a block. Note that there was a Serbo-Croatian war during the 1990s. But there is no reason for this kind of nationalistic behavior.

As you can see here https://hr.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Razgovor_sa_suradnikom:VS6507&action=history this admin user on hr wiki is harassing me because of the nationality. Whom should I ask for help? Alex (talk) 16:38, 19 November 2015 (UTC)

  • They deactivated their ArbCom ~5 years ago, so I think your best options are either (a) contact the blocking admin or (b) try to get a message to their version of WP:AN/I. This isn't something we can address here. --Hammersoft (talk) 18:49, 19 November 2015 (UTC)
  • Alex, Croatian Wiki has a history of severe dysfunction, and the broader community had to step in with extraordinary steps to revoke abusive admins and their checkuser. The meta discussion can be seen m:Requests_for_comment/2013_issues_on_Croatian_Wikipedia. It's also covered in our article on Croatian Wikipedia. I do not know whether the Croatian administrator community has recovered, or whether it continues to be dysfunctional. The first step is to carefully examine the reason given for your block, carefully examine the Wiki policies to see if there is any remotely reasonable basis for it. If not, then there should be some process in place to request that the block be reviewed by other administrators. If that fails, you probably just have to wait out the block. There is one more possibility, but I do not list it lightly. I do not know what is going on at Croatian wiki. *IF* you do an extensive investigation, *IF* you find substantial solid evidence of systematic abuses, it may be possible to open a new process at meta resembling m:Requests_for_comment/2013_issues_on_Croatian_Wikipedia. That would involve a lot of work, evidence of systematic abuses and dysfunction. Your block is a "local matter" and we can't directly intervene on that. The only outside intervention would be if the adminship of the wiki as a whole were (again) shown to be grossly dysfunctional. Alsee (talk) 19:41, 19 November 2015 (UTC)
Hmm, I see. I was pretty abused by an admin, Kubura. When I told him that I didn't like the tone he was talking to me, he said that I was violating some nonexistent rule. And when I deleted that "message" I was blocked for a month. Every single edit that I made was monitored for typing mistakes, and when I said I don't want to get any more messages, they didn't care... Alex (talk) 23:18, 19 November 2015 (UTC)
Alsee, and for example their "rule" says "no nationality symbols", and their front page has Ustaše logo. I don't know about you, but I think that's horrible. Alex (talk) 23:47, 19 November 2015 (UTC)
Are you talking about the little bubble icon with the red and white checkerboard, about 1 cm in diameter at the top of the page? I suppose that readers familiar with Croatia might associate "chequy Argent and Gules" with the Coat of arms of Croatia, but I'm not really sure why you say that it is both the symbol of a fascist movement from the 1930s and 1940s and an nationality symbol. Or perhaps you were talking about some other item on the main page? WhatamIdoing (talk) 21:53, 20 November 2015 (UTC)
The problem is that Coat of Arms is a washed out nazi movement symbol, chosen by hard line nationalist Tudjman, who prosecuted more than 200,000 people from Croatia. Vs6 507 04:45, 21 November 2015 (UTC)
  • Is there a possibility to ask for help or start a discussion of the problems at hr.wikipedia over at meta? I noticed that there's This discussion on Meta about similar problems at a different Wikipedia. Perhaps they could help you there? This is the main page to start discussions on cross-wiki issues. --Jayron32 19:03, 20 November 2015 (UTC)

Piloting TWL WP:Research help for Select Articles

Hey all, I wanted to inform everyone of two discussions with WikiProject Military history and WikiProject Med, about piloting links to WP:Research help in articles, Astinson (WMF) (talk) 00:32, 25 November 2015 (UTC)

Non-primary source needed

In the section Space_flight_simulator_game#Trade_Wars, why is there a "non-primary source needed" tag after the bit about games being influenced by Trade Wars? Isn't a quote by a developer exactly the type of thing you want? SharkD  Talk  00:14, 26 November 2015 (UTC)

It's not really quite the right tag, but it's probably close enough: The problem isn't so much that they're PRIMARY, but that http://wiki.classictw.com, being a wiki, is a self-published source and per BLPSPS, "Never use self-published sources – including but not limited to books, zines, websites, blogs, and tweets – as sources of material about a living person, unless written or published by the subject (see below). ... Living persons may publish material about themselves, such as through press releases or personal websites. Such material may be used as a source only if: ... it does not involve claims about third parties ..." Making claims that the developers listed were influenced is making claims about third parties and thus prohibited by BLPSPS. Since some of the quotes are attributed at wiki.classictw.com, some of them might be able to be used directly using the attributed sources, but a quick glance at them makes me concerned that many, if not most or all, of them are not reliable sources, but that's just on first blush. Regards, TransporterMan (TALK) 00:36, 26 November 2015 (UTC)
I hope it's okay, but I moved the discussion here. I should have posted there in the first place. SharkD  Talk  01:27, 26 November 2015 (UTC)

Images of skulls on talk pages about recent fatal events

{{WikiProject Death}} features two different images of human skulls, one a photograph. Is it acceptable for such images to be posted on the talk pages of articles on recent massacres such as the Paris shootings, fatal aircraft cashes or other violent deaths? Please discuss, at Template talk:WikiProject Death#Images. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 15:58, 25 November 2015 (UTC)

Maybe a scythe? All the best: Rich Farmbrough, 20:33, 27 November 2015 (UTC).

Eyes needed

2015 Minneapolis shooting needs eyes to keep it NPOV. I removed the worst, but it still needs work. All the best: Rich Farmbrough, 20:17, 27 November 2015 (UTC).

"Speedy Deletion Wiki"

I ran into this wiki today. Quite interesting how there's a wiki full of discarded Wikipedia pages! Does anyone here have knowledge of the circumstances of its birth? smileguy91talk - contribs 22:44, 28 November 2015 (UTC)

@Smileguy91: I haven't come across that one, but there are a few others like it. In fact, we have an article about one: Deletionpedia. — Rhododendrites talk \\ 06:12, 29 November 2015 (UTC)

Hello

Note that Joe Marston died on november 29 according to sources on Google. Thank you.

Thanks, although it appears that someone has already added that information into the article. smileguy91talk - contribs 15:37, 29 November 2015 (UTC)

RfC: What should the language infobox display when editors have not found any speaker figures?

There is a RfC at Template talk:Infobox language#RfC: What should the language infobox display when editors have not found any speaker figures?:

In the case that editors have looked for speaker figures, but have not found any, they can set the parameter speakers of Template:Infobox language to ?. This currently causes the infobox to display “Native speakers (no data)”. There are two questions:

  1. Should we display something in this case, or should we display nothing?
  2. If we should display something, then what should it say?

Thanks for your comments. --mach 🙈🙉🙊 09:38, 29 November 2015 (UTC)

What happened to the WikiProject brochures

A lot of work went into creating brochures about various WikiProjects for Wikimania 2014, then they disappeared. I think the brochures should be available to be used by the projects for other promotional occasions - using them only once is a waste of effort. Where are the brochures now and what needs to be done to make them available for reuse by the respective projects? Roger (Dodger67) (talk) 11:53, 22 November 2015 (UTC)

Are you looking for User:EdSaperia's work? See c:Category:Wikimania 2014 leaflets for some. WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:07, 24 November 2015 (UTC)
Thanks, WhatamIdoing - unfortunately the one I'm specifically looking for, about WP:WikiProject Disability, is not there. Are the rest kept somewhere else? AFAIK dozens of WikiProjects participated in the leaflet production, far more than in that Commons category. Roger (Dodger67) (talk) 20:43, 29 November 2015 (UTC)
Found it, Roger: on the Wikimania site. The leaflet for WikiProject Disability, like most of the others, appears to be posted solely to the Wikimania site. I wonder whether that could/should be Help:Transwiki'd to Commons. WhatamIdoing (talk) 00:29, 30 November 2015 (UTC)
@WhatamIdoing - I actually rediscovered the last time I raised this issue at the talk page there. The uploader User:EdSaperia, failed to licence the leaflets when he uploaded them to the Wikimania site, so Commons cannot accept them. He has not been active for several months, so I've emailed him. Thanks for the help so far. Roger (Dodger67) (talk) 10:58, 30 November 2015 (UTC)
You might try contacting User:Samballand99 as well. He uploaded the one that you're interested in. WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:15, 30 November 2015 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Take the lead!

Hi folks, am going to run this competition in January. see Wikipedia:Take the lead!. Cheers, Cas Liber (talk · contribs) 02:29, 30 November 2015 (UTC)

Tyron Akins copyvio

Much of the Tyron Akins is copied from his Auburn Tigers bio. Ssu (talk) 06:50, 30 November 2015 (UTC)

Reporting of US federal politics compromised by paywalls

See this The Atlantic report:

This affects Wikipedia since we use newspaper articles as sources. If any Wikipedians actually have subscriptions to The Wall Street Journal etc. it would be very useful for them to focus on federal government political reporting. Writing content on Wikipedia and pointing to relevant articles could help overcome this issue. WhisperToMe (talk) 22:50, 30 November 2015 (UTC)

Research proposal needs community review and approval

Dear Wikipedians,

(Please let us know if we need to post this in a different section of the Village Pump. I will move it there.)

I am a computer science PhD student at the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities. We are working on a project in which we plan to invite some Wikipedia editors to complete a survey. We will describe the overview of the research proposal and invite you to review and approve. Thanks for your tremendous help!

Project overview: The project focuses on identifying the main article and sub article relationship in a purpose of better serving the Wikipedia article structure. (For example, main article:United States and sub-article History of the United States). Accordingly to the definition of {Main} Template, "(w)hen a Wikipedia article is large, it is often written in summary style. This template is used after the heading of the summary, to link to the subtopic article that has been summarized." However, the use of the {main} template is not well executed and contains a lot of misclassification. This relationship is important for artificial intelligent system that uses concept level Wikipedia content and for reducing the language barrier on multilingual wikipedia.

Survey overview: The purpose of the survey is to understand editor's understanding of the main/sub article relationship and their decision criteria when they create sub-articles. We want to recruit 30 editors to fill out an online survey, which can be completed in about 5 mins.

Participant: We want to recruit a mixture of editors who have created main/sub-article relationship (expert) and who haven't done so. We will identify the expert by mining the edit history of the article that contains correct use of the Template{Main}.

Recruiting method: We will leave message in the editors' user talk page.The message will include greeting, brief introduction of this study, appreciation and link to the survey.

We will make sure we contact the editors and conduct the survey in a respectful manner to the Wikipedian and the community. Please feel free to let us know if you have any concerns!

Thanks Allen Lin. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Cheetah90 (talk • contribs) 22:01, 27 November 2015 (UTC)

I'd be surprised if you find many editors who actually do understand subarticles. I think I do, but this remains one of the potential features of WP that is greatly underutilized; when it is used, it rarely is on a consistent basis. I'd be interested in knowing how you chose to select as a topic for research. Reply offline if you wish . DGG ( talk ) 09:37, 29 November 2015 (UTC)
Just sent message on your talk page :) Thanks for your interest!
Cheetah90 Would you please register your research project at meta:Research:Subject recruitment? We ask that anyone doing human subject research on the Wikipedia community using Wikimedia community channels register there. Blue Rasberry (talk) 21:07, 1 December 2015 (UTC)
Bluerasberry sorry, I forgot to include the link https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Research:Main/sub-article_relationship — Preceding unsigned comment added by Cheetah90 (talk • contribs) 04:35, 2 December 2015 (UTC)
And, Cheetah90, since you didn't sign that message, that attempt to ping Bluerasberry didn't work; I've just redone it. Graham87 09:38, 2 December 2015 (UTC)

Erasmus userbox

Feel free to reuse. Design is courtesy of User:Brianhe. --Pine✉ 18:39, 29 November 2015 (UTC)

 This user was a member of the Wikipedia community when it was awarded the Erasmus Prize.

Muhammad RFC

There is a current RFC regarding a passage in the Muhammad article. If anyone cares to join the link is here:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Muhammad#rfc_06D1994 Tivanir2 (talk) 23:29, 3 December 2015 (UTC)

Extreme bias among administrators on Swedish Wikipedia

Hi!

I don't know where to go with this because the situation is so absurd. I have been trying for weeks to make the article about the controversial party Sweden Democrats on the Swedish version sv:Sverigedemokraterna and I have just been unjustly banned for the second time. The problem is that the same guys who are against changing anything of importance on that page are also administrators with weird arguments for example: if one member of a discussion leaves, nobody can change anything until his outspoken approval has been shown(1) and that is does not effect the conclusion if the leading investigator of the state investigation about whether or not Sweden democrats are racist or not was an outspoken enemy of the Sweden Democrats(2). They also actively engages in Wikipedia:Edit warring(3).

I think it is very difficult anyone who isn't very interested in Swedish Politics the controversy regarding the Sweden Democrats and not even all Swedes understand it. Basically there is two perspectives. One perspective is in early days they were associated with right wing extremist and some say once extremist always extremist. The other perspective is that history is not that relevant and wants to focus on today's politics. The later perspective does not exist in any shape or form on the Swedish version of Wikipedia, but does in the English version(Moderation and growth, Into parliament, Rise in support). When I tried to introduce this to Swedish article I got banned when an administrator reset the article without barely commenting(4). Look at the statements that were removed and tell if the were controversial, and see the several page discussion about these changes.

To give you some context of the topic Sweden takes 6 times as many immigrates as Germany (5) and while USA debates whether or not it should take 10 000 Syrian refugees. Sweden accepts 10 000 refugees per week although several times smaller than USA. Sweden Democrats is the only party that has been questioning this. Although they are considered extreme what they actually say is that they want to bring down immigration to Denmark's level(about 90 % less). There has never been any negative comments about the size of the immigration in the Swedish mainstream news, but it has been mentioned in the New York Times (6). Recently a Iranian immigrantsv:Tino Sanandaji with a degree from University of Chicago who mainstream media can't play the racist card on has started to speak up against media, and also leaked documents about the government tried to cover up the cost of immigration (7). Although he has found a translator now, most of this is in Swedish currently. Here he criticize the largest newspaper Dagens Nyheter who even though OECD concluded that immigration was a net loss for Sweden, reported that they claimed it was a net gain(8).

Where do I go with this and how I get rid of the bias on Swedish Wikipedia when the admins are biased?

[22] 1. [23] "Det finns ingen tidsgräns. Yger (diskussion) 28 november 2015 kl. 11.06 (CET) " 2. [24] Utredaren - oavsett vem det är - har att följa uppdragsgivarens (regeringens) direktiv Lindansaren (diskussion) 30 oktober 2015 kl. 15.45 (CET) 3. [25] Every criteria fulfilled 4. [26] "återställer kontroversiella redigeringar. Det blev väldigt fokus på vad sd tycker där." 4 december 2015 kl. 16.34‎ Averater 5. [27] 6. [28] 7. [29] 8. [30]

I know I have been trolling in my early Wikipedia days, but I have been serious now for a couple of years. And this is serious. Does this community agree with them or not? Maybe I am just insane--Immunmotbluescreen (talk) 18:57, 4 December 2015 (UTC)

And now my repeal for getting banned by a biased administrator got rejected by another biased administrator actively blocking changes to the article and with 35 hits on the discussion page. Once again without arguing about the actual changes or commenting on how the proclaimed edit war started. Denied. The other admin did not even look at the case but commented anyway. Can't answer until tomorrow when ban is lifted--Immunmotbluescreen (talk) 20:22, 4 December 2015 (UTC)
This is English Wikipedia. Not a single person here has any authority over what happens at Swedish Wikipedia, any more than people at Swedish Wikipedia would have over actions here at English Wikipedia. If you need help from outside of Swedish Wikipedia, the correct place to go is at the "Requests for Comment" page at meta.wikimedia.org. Here is the direct link to that page. --Jayron32 20:30, 4 December 2015 (UTC)
meta:Requests for comment is where you want to post this, not here.--Ymblanter (talk) 08:34, 5 December 2015 (UTC)

Hello

Gladstone Anderson really died ? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 109.185.175.84 (talk) 16:54, 6 December 2015 (UTC)

Gladstone Anderson (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views)
Possibly, but I have another editor has undone today's edit since it did not cite a reliable source. You'll have to wait for mainstream news sources to confirm this news. -- John of Reading (talk) 17:03, 6 December 2015 (UTC)

A humble request

I request the developers of Wikipedia and technical support team to please consider my request. My request is that Wikipedia should develop an official Wikipedia app for windows mobile phone users. Ankit2299 (talk) 16:59, 6 December 2015 (UTC)

How to make friends in Wikipedia

Is Wikipedia a place where you can meet new people and make friends? I tried to work and cooperate well with others, but I get treated negatively or underappreciated. Yes, Wikipedia is not a social network, but I hoped that Wikipedia is a welcoming community. Right now, disdain has been common, discouraging a newcomer's efforts to make friends here. Probably a successful Wiki-alike competitor would invite everyone alike... besides Wikia. --George Ho (talk) 03:12, 2 December 2015 (UTC)

Hi George Ho.
 I'm sorry that you're finding Wikipedia to be a negative experience.  I too sometimes encounter editors who seem to treat me with disdain or even contempt; but that is, by far, a tiny exception.  The vast majority of editors whom I've encountered have treated me with kindness and understanding, and have been very pleasant to work with.
 I'm not sure if I would categorize Wikipedia as a place to make "friends" in a usual sense of the word, since editors rarely ever get to meet in person or even learn each other's real names; but there are several editors with whom I feel a positive connection.
 Please feel free to message me at any time, on my talk page, or in any other appropriate forum.  (If it's not on my talk page, please don't forget to ping me.)
Rich
Richard27182 (talk) 06:46, 2 December 2015 (UTC)
Hello George. I suspect the closest you can come to something like that on Wikipedia is to find a project group with a subject you like, then try working together on some activities. You'll at least have an area of common interest to share. Praemonitus (talk) 21:03, 3 December 2015 (UTC)
George, I'll agree with Praemonitus here. There's some fun in finding people with a common interest and working together. The problem is most of the time, people here on their own and take their editing too seriously. The other thing may be to go to a Wikipedia meetup and meet other people in real life. It's tough because it is the internet after all. -- Ricky81682 (talk) 21:17, 3 December 2015 (UTC)
Another way is to join in or organise a local meetup. I know that most of my interactions with George are formal, responding to requests, and that is a lot of how we work here. Graeme Bartlett (talk) 21:34, 3 December 2015 (UTC)
Hi George Ho. There are some places on Wikipedia that are friendlier and we are continually looking to find ways to make it more so. One place that seems to be particularly good for newer editors is the Teahouse; it is a great place to start. I hope your experience gets better, it is such a worthy cause. LilaTretikov (WMF) (talk) 01:44, 6 December 2015 (UTC)
I've been a Wikipedian for ten years. It's no longer suitable for me. George Ho (talk) 01:47, 6 December 2015 (UTC)
Oh, I should have looked at your edits. Do you have suggestions on how to make this better? LilaTretikov (WMF) (talk) 01:49, 6 December 2015 (UTC)
I don't think of Wikipedia itself as a place to "make friends". Wikipedia is not a social networking service. As others have indicated, on-wiki you eventually find editors that you admire and whose input you value but calling them "friends" is a bit of a stretch. That said, yes, it's possible to make friends as a Wikipedian! To do that it's best to meet people face-to-face. Found out what kind of meetings happen in your area. There could be Wikipedia meetups there. You could also find out if there is a Wikimedia chapter in your area and go to one of its meetings. I see on your talk page that you say you are "inept at social communications" so if you prefer to stay online, focusing on Wikiproject that interests you is a good idea. It will bring you in contact with a smaller group of editors with a similar interest. Good luck. Jason Quinn (talk) 20:51, 7 December 2015 (UTC)
I would like to endorse the idea of engaging more offline. Also, engaging in the more communications/meta parts of the project like WP:Signpost or WP:GLAM or Education outreach are great ways to find more moral building oportunties: you get a chance to interact with more people that are excited about the project, or whose lives have been changed for the better because of Wikimedia. I know WP:Wikimedia DC, GLAM-Wiki and the Education program turned my engagement with Wikipedia from obsessive detail/process fixing, into a much more strategic and life-influencing activity, because I realized how important our vision is, and how people needed the work we do. Sadads (talk) 22:18, 7 December 2015 (UTC)
I also noticed that you self-identify as LGBT. I would highly recommend engaging with the LGBT user group: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_LGBT/Portal . Sadads (talk) 22:21, 7 December 2015 (UTC)

Wiki Loves Folk

In line with the diffusion of free knowledge, in recent years Wikimedia Spain has celebrated Wiki Loves Monuments and Wiki Loves Earth, photographic contests that serve to value the historical, artistic and natural heritage. In that sense, we believe that another important aspect of the culture of a country is its folklore and, within this, its festivals and traditions.

Along with its monumental or natural wealth, Spain has a rich and varied folklore worth to value: religious celebrations, festivals, food festivals... For that reason we´ll organize a new contest in 2016, Wiki Loves Folk, focusing on this type of cultural heritage. While in the past we have based on Sites of Cultural Interest and Sites of Community Importance, in this case we propose the promotion of those celebrations that have any of the following statements: International Touristic Interest, National Touristic Interest, Regional Touristic Interest and Provincial Touristic Interest.

At this moment we are immersed in preparations but very soon we´ll publish details of the competition: celebration dates, rules for participation, awards, etc. We invite you to participate in their organization and preparations. Best regards. --Rodelar (talk) 12:13, 7 December 2015 (UTC)

Wiki Loves Folk logo contest

Hello, continuing preparations for Wiki Loves Folk, we propose a contest for choosing the logo; the dates for submitting proposals are between December 10, 2015 and January 31, 2016 and the voting period between February 1 and February 10, 2016. More information and rules on this page. Regards. --Rodelar (talk) 12:16, 9 December 2015 (UTC)

New Wikipedia Library Accounts Available Now (December 2015)


Hello Wikimedians!

 
The TWL OWL says sign up today!

The Wikipedia Library is announcing signups today for, free, full-access accounts to published research as part of our Publisher Donation Program. You can sign up for new accounts and research materials from:

  • Gale - multidisciplinary periodicals, newspapers, and reference sources - 10 accounts
  • Brill - academic e-books and journals in English, Dutch, and other languages - 25 accounts
  • Finnish Literature Society (in Finnish)
  • Magiran (in Farsi) - scientific journal articles - 100 articles
  • Civilica (in Farsi) - Iranian journal articles, seminars, and conferences - 50 accounts

Many other partnerships with accounts available are listed on our partners page, including EBSCO, DeGruyter, and Newspaperarchive.com. Do better research and help expand the use of high quality references across Wikipedia projects: sign up today!
--The Wikipedia Library Team 01:01, 11 December 2015 (UTC)

Help us a start Wikipedia Library in your language! Email us at wikipedialibrary@wikimedia.org
This message was delivered via the Global Mass Message tool to The Wikipedia Library Global Delivery List.

A cycle in the category tree: Problem solving and Creativity

The category Problem solving is a subcategory of the category Creativity; also the latter is a subcategory of the former.

Wikipedia:Village_pump_(miscellaneous)/Archive_51#The_3_categories_Economies.2C_Economic_systems_and_Economics SoSivr (talk) 18:04, 10 December 2015 (UTC)

  • Hmm! I appreciate the problem. Offhand I think neither should be a subcategory of the other. Remember the pages on these topics can be in both categories, and I wouldn't propose to mess with that. Any other views? -- econterms (talk) 23:40, 10 December 2015 (UTC)
  • Done! Thanks for the tip. -- econterms (talk) 18:40, 11 December 2015 (UTC)


Moreover I made suitable subcategories of Creativity subcategories of Problem solving (two subcateg/s of Creativity, Abstraction and Imagination, ARE ALREADY subcateg/s of Problem solving, a good sign !). For example:

Transwiki process for moving non-English content to a different Wikipedia?

Is there a transwiki process (such as tagging templates) to use to mark pages that are not written in English to move to a different, appropriate language Wikipedia ?

And is there a way to mark content that is not English and clearly not meant to be on English Wikipedia for deletion? (Pages that WP:PNT says are not within its purview, therefore not appropriate content for English Wikipedia)

-- 70.51.44.60 (talk) 05:02, 11 December 2015 (UTC)

If an article would belong at English Wikipedia but for being in the wrong language, we don't delete the article because someone could translate the article and fix the situation. Deletion is primarily reserved for subjects which have no reason to exist at Wikipedia. --Jayron32 11:51, 11 December 2015 (UTC)
When an article is in the wrong language, there should be an established process to copy it, if we aren't going to move it, to the appropriate language Wikipedia, since it was contributed in a particular language, you would expect it would be appearing in the version of Wikipedia for that language. There should be established copy-tags to template such pages. (such as we have for copying things to Wiktionary) -- 70.51.44.60 (talk) 05:38, 12 December 2015 (UTC)
If it doesn't qualify for a WP:PNT translation request, then does it really belong on English Wikipedia? -- 70.51.44.60 (talk) 05:38, 12 December 2015 (UTC)
There is an established process for doing this. See Help:Transwiki for instructions. It is slightly more complex than merely pasting a tag at the top of a page. WhatamIdoing (talk) 06:28, 13 December 2015 (UTC)
That's the trnaswiki procedure, so that still doesn't tell me if there is an establish process (like AfD) that exists. I have no access to IMPORT, so that's not a useful procedure to me. -- 70.51.44.60 (talk) 06:43, 13 December 2015 (UTC)
Yes, you are correct: The established, license-compliant method for copying content off of the English Wikipedia and onto another language's Wikipedia is the transwiki process. This is the established process, exactly like AFD is the established process for discussing whether an article should be deleted.
You might have noticed that I did not say that you would be able to do it without assistance from others. I note that, as a logged-out editor, you are equally unable to set up an AFD page. If you want this done, then you will have to ask for help from people who have the relevant user rights. WhatamIdoing (talk) 06:48, 13 December 2015 (UTC)

Estimate duration of edit

I know all edits come with submitted timestamps but is there a way to find out how long it took someone to compose an edit? One way would be to use the difference between when the editing window was first opened and the submitted time, but as far as I know the time at which the edit is started is not recorded. I don't think any information about previews leading up to a submission is recorded either. Just seeing if anyone knows something I don't.

Evoapps (talk) 03:25, 8 December 2015 (UTC)

After some sleuthing, I've uncovered a few answers to my original question that I want to post here. Here is a research project that aims to answer this question specifically. Research:Measuring editor labor hours. Various session metrics can be combined to estimate the activity session. Research:Activity session

Evoapps (talk) 14:53, 8 December 2015 (UTC)

Of course, a user may have spent hours working on this edit before vlicking the "Edit" link for the page/section, either on a uyserspace page (which was subsequently deleted) or offline. The software Wikipedia runs can't possibly give you this information. עוד מישהו Od Mishehu 04:44, 14 December 2015 (UTC)

The two categories People and Humans

Another cycle in the category tree: the category People is a subcategory of the category Humans; also the latter is a subcategory of the former.
In my opinion among the two subcategory relationships the first one is the one that should be preferred.
--Related:Wikipedia:Categorization#Subcategorization (shortcut: WP:SUBCAT)
--First related post/discussion: Wikipedia:Village_pump_(miscellaneous)/Archive_51#The_3_categories_Economies.2C_Economic_systems_and_Economics
--Second related post/discussion: #A_cycle_in_the_category_tree:_Problem_solving_and_Creativity
SoSivr (talk) 21:03, 11 December 2015 (UTC)

In this case, I think that Category:Humans should be taken out of Category:People. Category:People seems to be primarily about topics related to individuals, and Category:Humans seems to be about our species. עוד מישהו Od Mishehu 04:47, 14 December 2015 (UTC)

GLAMing Madrid Challenge

Hello. I want to invite you to participate in a writing contest about three state museums in Madrid (Museum of Romaticism, Museo del Traje and National Archaeological Museum), from today December 14, 2015 till January 14, 2016. You can join it in every language. More information in GLAMing Madrid Challenge. Best, --Rodelar (talk) 09:24, 14 December 2015 (UTC)

Rfc can use your input

Please feel free to contribute | on this RfC . KoshVorlon 13:30, 15 December 2015 (UTC)

Too late... it has been closed. Blueboar (talk) 15:32, 15 December 2015 (UTC)

RfC: Should we continue recommending the sign ⟨ɵ⟩?

There is an RfC at Help talk:IPA for English#RfC: Should we continue recommending the sign ⟨ɵ⟩?:

We are currently recommending that the sign ⟨ɵ⟩ be used for a reduced vowel diaphoneme that can correspond either to the phoneme /oʊ/ or the phoneme /ə/, for example in the word omission. Should we continue to do so?

In the IPA, the sign ⟨ɵ⟩ represents the close-mid central rounded vowel. Our use of ⟨ɵ⟩ is based on Bolinger, Dwight (1986), Intonation and Its Parts, Stanford University Press, pp. 347–360. Bolinger proposed not to analyze the reduced vowels as mere versions of the full vowels, but as a special set consisting of three vowels: The “fronted” Willie vowel /ɨ/, the “central” Willa vowel /ə/, and the “backed” willow vowel /ɵ/. Bolinger’s use is slightly different from ours (1) because Bolinger’s /ɵ/ is not a diaphoneme, but a phoneme; (2) because there are words such as willow or lasso or the second part of the MOUTH diphthong where Bolinger would use /ɵ/, but we would not; and (3) because Bolinger’s analysis allows for an alternation between /ɵ/ and /ə/ in words such as canopy, Indonesia, allophonic, or composition.

The English Wikipedia is the only major dictionary that has adopted Bolinger’s sign ⟨ɵ⟩ in a broad phonemic IPA transcription scheme (for an overview of other dictionaries’ broad phonemic IPA transcription schemes, see Help:IPA conventions for English#Reduced vowels).

If you are interested in the edit history of ⟨ɵ⟩ on Help:IPA for English, you may want to check out User:J. 'mach' wust/sandbox#Edit history of ⟨ɵ⟩ (with diff links etc.).

Thanks for your comments. --mach 🙈🙉🙊 12:42, 16 December 2015 (UTC)

Hello

Note that Gabre Gabric died on 16 december acording to sources. Thank You. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 109.185.175.84 (talk) 15:58, 16 December 2015 (UTC)

This (her death) has been added to the page, but there doesn't appear to be any sources for her death. 220 of Borg 11:55, 17 December 2015 (UTC)
This might suffice "Gabre Gabric dies at 101; starred in No. 1 masters documentary" masterstrack.com. 220 of Borg 11:59, 17 December 2015 (UTC)

Company advertising that we cite them

For amusement value – Secure Restoration advertises themselves by saying "as featured on Wikipedia.org", meaning simply that we cite them (or did, until I just deleted the relevant paragraph). I'd never realised that was something to brag about! I tried to snapshot the page with WebCite for posterity, but it seems to have refused the bot. A version of the site from May is archived by the Wayback Machine, but it precedes our "endorsement". Adrian J. Hunter(talk•contribs) 08:01, 17 December 2015 (UTC)

It's not surprising. Given Wikipedia's presence, a link would massively increase their SEO. There was a group of sneaky editors that were adding hidden alleged book URLs to their spam pages for the same reasons. -- Ricky81682 (talk) 08:14, 17 December 2015 (UTC)
External links from wikipedia are Nofollowed, so they won't have any effect (massive or otherwise) on anybody's SEO. Chuntuk (talk) 16:09, 17 December 2015 (UTC)
  • For shits and giggles, see how often we use "featured" in our articles. Drmies (talk) 16:12, 17 December 2015 (UTC)

What IdeaLab campaigns do you want to see?

 

Hey folks. I’m seeking your help to decide on topics for new IdeaLab campaigns that could be run starting next year. These campaigns are designed to attract proposals from Wikimedia project contributors that address a broad gap or area of need in Wikimedia projects.

Here’s how to participate:

With thanks,

I JethroBT (WMF), Community Resources, Wikimedia Foundation. 23:02, 17 December 2015 (UTC)

AfD votes needed

At WP:AfD, there is currently no or little backlog, however, for the first time in several months, votes are clearly in much demand. We have many nominated articles with no votes even after being multiply relisted. Please spend a bit of time commenting on nominations, most importantly where there are no or few votes. Thanks.--Ymblanter (talk) 09:06, 19 December 2015 (UTC)

Wikimania 2016 banner

I'm currently seeing a banner for Wikimania 2016, which reads:

The Wikimania Conference is now open for scholarship applications and program submissions.See the main page for more information.

The page to which it links has nothing about scholarships, and there is nothing on the "main page" of this wiki. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 16:30, 17 December 2015 (UTC)

When I look at the page you linked to, there is a link on the left-side to "scholarships". RudolfRed (talk) 01:29, 18 December 2015 (UTC)
Also, this banner has been edited to add spam in Arabic, which appears from Google Translate to be for an Egyptian university. The usual V/D/E links are not present so I can't edit it myself. Matt's talk 16:03, 20 December 2015 (UTC)

Wikimania 2016: call for proposals is open!

Dear Wiki[p,m]edians,
the call for proposals for Wikimania 2016 is open! All the members of the Wikimedia projects, researchers and observers are invited to propose a critical issue to be included in the programme of the conference, which will be held in Italy, in Esino Lario, from June 21 to 28.
Through this call we only accept what we call critical issues, i.e. proposals aiming at presenting problems, possible solutions and critical analysis about Wikimedia projects and activities in 18 minutes. These proposals do not need to target newbies, and they can assume attendees to already have a background knowledge on a topic (community, tech, outreach, policies...).
To submit a presentation, please refer to the Submissions page on the Wikimania 2016 website. Deadline for submitting proposals is 7th January 2016 and the selection of these proposals will be through a blind peer-reviewed process. Looking forward to your proposals. --Yiyi (Dimmi!) 09:03, 19 December 2015 (UTC)

Wikignoming help required for contest

Hi all, I am coordinating a contest in January - Wikipedia:Take the lead! - and have discovered that many many articles with either no or too-short leads are not tagged as such. Rather than tag-bomb all over the place, I reckon it'd be good to tag high-importance or vital articles, things that are broad, important or accessible. I've done a bit but would be grateful if any folks decided to do some selective tagging with {{no lead}} or {{lead too short}}. For more info see the contest page or discussion here. Cheers, Cas Liber (talk · contribs) 06:09, 20 December 2015 (UTC)

Timed text

Apparently Timed text is now functional on enwiki, but I can’t find anything about it beside the article. Apparently you create a page in some format in the TimedText namespace, and that page somehow gets linked to a related file in File namespace. I looked at Wikipedia:Timed text, but that is a broken soft link to Commons. I looked also at WP:ACCESSIBILITY, and the outdated mention there said only that as of 2012 it is not available on enwiki.

What raised the issue for me was what to do with a non-free TimedText page: WP:NFC hardly mentions “Timed text” and “Timedtext”; so I started a discussion at Wikipedia talk:Non-free content/Archive 65#Non-free TimedText. —teb728 t c 22:12, 20 December 2015 (UTC)

I have fixed the link at Wikipedia:Timed text to commons:Commons:Video#Subtitles and closed captioning.[31] People often forget the double "commons:" for interwiki links to the Commons namespace at Commons. PrimeHunter (talk) 22:25, 20 December 2015 (UTC)

Help moving pages

Assuming there's a way to do so in bulk, could someone move the sub-pages of Wikipedia:WikiProject Video games/Reference library/Top video games lists to the Wikipedia namespace please? Currently most of them are in my user space still. User:SharkD/Top_video_games_lists/15 is an example. There's about 100 of them. Thanks! SharkD  Talk  02:52, 21 December 2015 (UTC)

Netherlands Institute for Sound and Vision donates 392 videos of historical newsreel footage

We expanded the collection videos on Wikimedia Commons with historical newsreel footage. Hereunder you can see some examples in this category all 392 videos can be found. This donation involves footage and newsreels from WWII and the Dutch state mines (coal mines) and footage of daily life. If you would like to help in matching videos to articles relevant to the subject, you can use this tool and it will take you directly to an overview of all videos that have not been used yet on the Dutch Wikipedia. Kind regards, Beeld en Geluid Collecties (talk) 10:02, 21 December 2015 (UTC)

  • Six thousand homing pigeons released, 1923.
  • Mills in Holland, 1927.
  • Two steamships stranded, 1930.
  • Liberation of Amsterdam, 1945.
  • War casualties, 1945.
  • Holidays in Holland, 1947.
  • Philips exists 60 years, 1951.
  • Opening new cokesfactory of the Dutch state mines, 1954.
  • European Space Research and Technology Centre (ESTEC) in Noordwijk, 1968.
  • Amsterdam 700 years, Sail Amsterdam, 1975.

Misleading text in the donation banner

So, the donation banner states: "We'll get right to it: this week, we ask you to help Wikipedia". Well "this week"' seems to have dragged on for quite a while, as I recall being pestered by the banner for the past 3 weeks, despite dismissing it and already donating. How long is the fundraising campaign? If it runs for the whole of December, then the WMF needs to be transparent with their readers rather than suggesting a span of only a week. It should say "this month". It's annoying, misleading and poor practice. JamesA >talk 13:57, 21 December 2015 (UTC)

In the News vs WikiNews

I am planning to participate more in WikiNews and to advertise it. However, I have never written the first article in my life. Also, the rules demanded originality and creativity. If I can participate more in WikiNews, I do not need to worry about Wikipedia's ITN anymore. Must I be a journalist or attend journalism courses before doing so? --George Ho (talk) 01:19, 21 December 2015 (UTC)

My understanding is no, you don't need any experience, just that there is a MOS and formatting they want, and of course they want strong sourcing or your own reporting if you are providing that. --MASEM (t) 01:29, 21 December 2015 (UTC)
Wikinews is a separate project and you can learn much more about it there than here, for example starting at wikinews:Wikinews:Introduction which links to wikinews:Wikinews:Writing an article and many other pages. PrimeHunter (talk) 01:56, 21 December 2015 (UTC)
I wrote my first article and submitted it for review. --George Ho (talk) 02:23, 21 December 2015 (UTC)

Hurray! My first article got published... Well, someone else made copy editing, but what the heck! By the way, how can I repopulate the sister site? It almost looks dead with bunch of FIFA and stuff. --George Ho (talk) 06:19, 22 December 2015 (UTC)

Can someone else put Roller disco on their watchlist?

Apparently I'm someone's hobby. - Richfife (talk) 00:42, 22 December 2015 (UTC)

I'll do you one better than that. No point giving him a predetermined expiry date to check back on when he's been this persistent, so drop me or WP:RFPP a note when you think it's been long enough for him to give up for good. —Cryptic 03:03, 22 December 2015 (UTC)
Thanks! - Richfife (talk) 04:36, 22 December 2015 (UTC)

Please! I don't want to live in Oceania!

I am a 19 year old university student. On 16 December 2015, CISA was passed in the US Congress.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protests_against_SOPA_and_PIPA

In January 2012, Wikipedia instigated protest of the nefarious SOPA and PIPA initiatives by blacking out its website for 24 hours. I will never forget it. I hope it doesn't become our fifth of November.

You and 100, 000 other websites forced the hand of the Whitehouse: "[We will] not support legislation that reduces freedom of expression, increases cybersecurity risk, or undermines the dynamic, innovative global Internet."

Why the comparative silence on more recent, arguably more important internet freedom setbacks?

Please, Wiki, I do not want to live in a future where private communications must be government approved.

Millennials are counting on you. The future of humanity may well depend on our ability to freely exchange information --and our ability to keep other information private.

It's time for another blackout. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.114.29.54 (talk) 22:12, 18 December 2015 (UTC)

Clarifications: CISA = Cybersecurity Information Sharing Act, a new U.S. law making it easier for businesses to share cyber threat information (including personal information) with the U.S. government, possibly by setting up protocols or a government computer system to receive such information. "Oceania" probably refers to the location of 1984 (novel), a story of surveillance and loss of privacy. The "fifth of November" probably refers to Guy Fawkes Night but I don't know its exact meaning here. Public policy topics are discussed more here on meta.wikimedia.org. I don't see any discussion or consensus on CISA there. It seems that Wikimedians and WMF are not taking a general position so far. -- econterms (talk) 13:51, 23 December 2015 (UTC)

"Modern"

There are a lot of contexts where the term "modern" can be redundant, ambiguous, or imho, a weasel word.

For example, airplanes are a very modern technology, so references to "modern airplanes" could include all airplanes, distinguishing them from kites and medieval gliders, or could include all airplanes since the Wright Flyer, distinguishing them from earlier experiments, or all airplanes still in use, or hundreds of other possibilities.

Outside technical terms such as "anatomically modern Homo sapiens," "modernism," and so on, maybe it would help to try to find other words.

"Airplanes in the modern era" and "airplanes since the Wright Flyer" might be awkward, but "present-day aircraft" might be a better alternative for the last set, even if the present changes from time to time. 108.45.79.25 (talk) 21:59, 23 December 2015 (UTC)

For background see Talk:StG 44#Considered by many where multiple sources have been given that use the term "modern".
 — Berean Hunter (talk) 00:33, 24 December 2015 (UTC)
In the context of the StG 44 article, the word "modern" is firearms terminology, with a very specific meaning and is back-up by multiple sources. Yet, for whatever reason IP user 108.45.79.25 refuses to accept that meaning. After, losing the discussion on the talk page, he comes here, he takes the word "modern" out of context, calls it a weasel word, and expects other users to support him. Well, I do not support him.--RAF910 (talk) 04:05, 24 December 2015 (UTC)

Hello

Please put Aafje Heynis into the deaths list. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 109.185.175.84 (talk) 14:28, 18 December 2015 (UTC)

Has been done by somebody.--Ymblanter (talk) 09:08, 19 December 2015 (UTC)

Grant request

Hello,

I've made a grant request to go to the Youth Olympic Games who will take place in Lillehammer in February 2016. I will be accredited as a media photographer and will be able to take high quality pictures for the Wikimedia projects. You can endorse this request here.

Happy holidays to all.

Pleclown (talk) 17:49, 25 December 2015 (UTC)

Need help with Wikidata error

Niantic Labs, now named "Niantic, Inc.", is a real company, the developer of the augmented reality video game Ingress. Within the game is an organization called the Niantic Project, which like all the characters in the game is fictional. Niantic Labs maintains a number of in-universe websites that its players ("Agents") can interact with, including several for the Niantic Project. These websites report on events and people that exist only within the game as if they were real.

The article for Niantic, Inc. is in the hidden Category:Official website different in Wikidata and Wikipedia. The article correctly lists http://nianticlabs.com/ as the company's official website, but Wikidata lists http://www.nianticproject.com/, which is the in-universe supposed website of the fictional Niantic Project.

I tried to edit the Wikidata page to correct it, but I've never used Wikidata before and am totally unfamiliar with it. Whatever I tried to do raised an error, and I couldn't save anything. I don't expect to use Wikidata, and so I don't want to invest the time and effort it'd take to make this one fix. Would someone who can please do so? Thank you. Please {{Ping}} me to discuss. --Thnidu (talk) 20:53, 25 December 2015 (UTC)

  Done--Ymblanter (talk) 21:01, 25 December 2015 (UTC)

RFC Notice

There is an active RfC about the White privilege article.
To view and/or participate, follow the link: Talk:White privilege#RFC: Neutrality of the first paragraph
Richard27182 (talk) 08:51, 27 December 2015 (UTC)

Permastub?

Has anyone ever heard or used this term? If so...or if not...make a comment at Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/Wikipedia:Permastub.....Cas Liber (talk · contribs) 23:50, 28 December 2015 (UTC)

RFC Notice: Star Wars: The Force Awakens

An RfC has been initiated to determine whether or not the title, Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens, is a significant alternate name that belongs in the lead section of the article. The RfC can be found here: Talk:Star Wars: The Force Awakens#RfC: Is "Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens" an alternate title to the film?. --GoneIn60 (talk) 00:25, 29 December 2015 (UTC)

Italicizing book series

Should "The Fitz and the Fool Trilogy" and "The Ki and Vandien tales" be italicized in Robin Hobb article? I am not sure they are official titles. SharkD  Talk  01:15, 29 December 2015 (UTC)

Consensus impasse

Need some extra eyes on this one. User:Wrestlinglover is pressing for the inclusion of a combined reigns table in at least the NXT championship article. Despite being informed that the table is redundant until there is a two time champion he insists that the table he wants incorporates "new information", when the information is already available in the table above through the list of champions in chronological order. I started a vote to involve other editors and to maybe get him to see that maybe he is wrong by pure numbers or by further comments. But he refuses to budge - creating an impasse. The "discussion" (more like a circular debate that he admits to fueling here) can be found here. Mega Z090 (talk) 03:34, 31 December 2015 (UTC)

Peyton Randolph

While editing the page Peyton, I noticed two really strangely named articles:

I would suggest renaming them to Peyton Randolph (politician, 1779–1828) and Peyton Randolph (politician, 1721–1775), respectively. I'm not sure what the convention is for dead people; if it is to only list the birth date, then go with that. nyuszika7h (talk) 23:30, 30 December 2015 (UTC)

In meantime, I found WP:NCPDAB, which suggests just using date of birth. Though maybe the latter is considered the primary topic, I don't know. nyuszika7h (talk) 13:18, 31 December 2015 (UTC)

Does Wikipedia respect copyrights of ISIS, etc, ?

There are references in Wikipedia to documents (or video/audio/images) from groups such as ISIS and AQ but no link to the actual material. Is this because of copyright or is it suppressed because of some other legal reason? Keith McClary (talk) 05:48, 2 January 2016 (UTC)

Yes we do, even though under US law we don't. Groups like ISIS typically don't have reciprical copyright agreements with the US (there's about 12 countries that don't including Iraq and North Korea), meaning that within the US, works published by the country cannot have copyright within the US even if the country has its own copyright. That said, Jimmy Wales has asked us to respect that copyright, as that means they aren't necessarily free around the world, and making them non-free avoids any potenital issues. --MASEM (t) 06:07, 2 January 2016 (UTC)
Jimmy Wales has no more authority than you or I in this matter, and his opinions no more weight than ours. Of course, he has a seat on the broad, and so can vote on any motion on the matter put before them, but as fr as I am aware, there has been no such motion. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 12:24, 2 January 2016 (UTC)
Actually we do need to respect copyright - the conventions and treaties do not say "persons who write for the wrong groups or in the wrong countries do not have any statutory copyright." Any living person gains copyright automatically no matter where he produces the material. For example, DPRK is a signatory to the Berne Convention as of 2003. http://www.copyright.gov/circs/circ38a.pdf is clear. And the argument that a bilateral treaty is needed is marginal - as long as the work is "published" in a country with a US treaty within 30 days of its original publication (it is remarkably unclear as to whether videos are "published" in the country where the server is located), then it has US copyright protection. ISIS is not a nation with treaties, any more than (say) any non-government has "treaties" with anyone. Best course is as Mr. Wales states - to respect copyright and intellectual property rights no matter what. Collect (talk) 13:26, 2 January 2016 (UTC)

Happy Public Domain Day!

 
Logo Public Domain Day


On January 1 we celebrate Public Domain Day as many works of authors who died 70+ years ago now enter the public domain and can be used freely.

Let us be aware: copyright is temporary. It only lasts during the authors lifetime and 70 years afterwards (in most countries). During those years it is limiting Wikipedia and her sister projects in showing works of art, literature, public art and buildings in countries without freedom of panorama, and more in the articles. But now a new batch is freed from copyrights!

An overview of images and texts that are restored or added to the Wikimedia Commons, are collected on: this page.

Many of these files still need a place in articles. You can help!

You can also help by uploading new files of subjects that are freed of copyrights.
You can also help by tagging all requests for deletion pages with the category when the file can be restored, which will be/was deleted.

As I follow the log of restored files this week, more images and texts will follow. If still files or texts are missing in the list, let me know or add them yourselves.

A very happy Public Domain Day! Romaine (talk) 11:53, 2 January 2016 (UTC)


  • Some of the freed files:

Yuribey Bridge images

The article Yuribey Bridge include a claim that "Photos can be shown only on Russian Wikipedia, because of Russian law.". This seems dubious; can anyone explain, or refute, that please? Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 12:18, 2 January 2016 (UTC)

Pinging BIL who added that line in 2013. BethNaught (talk) 13:34, 2 January 2016 (UTC)
It is written in the info for the photo which is shown in the corresponding Russian article (which I wanted to have in the English article): ru:Файл:Мост через Юрибей.JPG. The text in the copyright box translates (by google translate) to: "This file is not free (does not meet the definition of free cultural works). In accordance with the decision of the Wikimedia Foundation, it can be used in the Russian section of the Wikipedia articles only in accordance with the criteria of fair use. Any other use (such as in the Russian section of Wikipedia, and outside it) can be a violation of copyright." Russia does not have Freedom of panorama.--BIL (talk) 13:53, 2 January 2016 (UTC)
This file is unfree since the photographer has never released in under the free license, and is uploaded as fair-use. The bridge itself is however free due to freedom of panorama in Russia. Whoever takes their own photo or convinces the author of any photo to release it under CC-BY-SA license, can upload the photo on Commons.--Ymblanter (talk) 13:59, 2 January 2016 (UTC)
Russia has FoP for buildings so per Ymblanter I am removing the sentence from the article. BethNaught (talk) 14:06, 2 January 2016 (UTC)
So there is no reason that the photo on ru.Wikipedia could not be used on the article on this project, under fair use? Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 14:28, 2 January 2016 (UTC)
AFAICT the bridge is still standing, so use here would fail the replaceability test? BethNaught (talk) 14:31, 2 January 2016 (UTC)
(ec) It would be difficult to justify that we need a fair-ise photo of a free object, but if one can write a convincing fair use rationale, why not?--Ymblanter (talk) 14:32, 2 January 2016 (UTC)

RfC notice: transhumanist politics

There is a Request for Comment at the Talk page for transhumanist politics. The Transhumanist Party recently finished an American bus tour – should it be mentioned in the "History" section of the article? –Haptic-feedback (talk) 07:00, 3 January 2016 (UTC)

Pałapus

I m not native speaker of English but i created few days ago new article, Pałapus. I am not able/i cannot insert coordinates into infobox can you help me? Prywaciarz101 (talk) 12:41, 4 January 2016 (UTC)

  Done, @Prywaciarz101: pls check them and adjust if needed.--Ymblanter (talk) 13:18, 4 January 2016 (UTC)

Average size of watchlist

So I finally decided to clean out my watchlist hoard today. I've managed to cut it down to around 6000 pages. I'm guessing this is still waaay too much. I'd like to get a general feel for where I am compared with the rest of the community. Am I in the norm? Am I way beyond average? (I'm thinking it could only be the latter, heh.) It looks like there was a small survey done back in 2007 which was helpful, but perhaps standards have changed since then. So just wondering, how big is your watchlist? ;D -- Ϫ 05:58, 22 December 2015 (UTC)

I don't ever look at my watchlist, except to erase to make the number of pages on it to zero. So, effectively, zero, but there might be more than zero on my watchlist. --I dream of horses (My edits) @ 06:02, 22 December 2015 (UTC)
I currently have 48 pages on my watch list, but then I frequently look to prune it back. Praemonitus (talk) 18:56, 22 December 2015 (UTC)
Currently about 10,400 pages (which surprises me). Only 2,050 of these are articles though. SiBr4 (talk) 19:20, 22 December 2015 (UTC)
857. ~ ONUnicorn(Talk|Contribs)problem solving 19:40, 22 December 2015 (UTC)
248 - Richfife (talk) 21:58, 22 December 2015 (UTC)
"Below are the last 404 changes in the last 24 hours" -- zzuuzz (talk) 22:01, 22 December 2015 (UTC)
I have 5480.--Ymblanter (talk) 22:07, 22 December 2015 (UTC)
1,203. Ivanvector 🍁 (talk) 22:08, 22 December 2015 (UTC)
After much pruning over the years - down to 4,600. Collect (talk) 22:28, 22 December 2015 (UTC)
Just over 5,000 but a lot are random userspace draft pages. -- Ricky81682 (talk) 22:31, 22 December 2015 (UTC)
1577 here. I tend to prune back the number by one or two hundred every 6 months or so. Sam Walton (talk) 22:36, 22 December 2015 (UTC)
797. Haven't needed to scrub it, because the pages on it are not often edited. -- econterms (talk) 14:11, 23 December 2015 (UTC)
2,874, roughly two-thirds articles. Adrian J. Hunter(talk•contribs) 23:47, 23 December 2015 (UTC)
Mine tends to hover around 100.  But I've only been editing for about half a year.  Richard27182 (talk) 08:43, 24 December 2015 (UTC)
22,815. >_< Mostly redlinks. —Cryptic 16:56, 24 December 2015 (UTC)
Wow. Ok, so this interests me. Cryptic, do many of those red links often pop up as new articles? Only a few? Do you usually only watchlist potentially troublesome article titles? Or is your watchlist a result of automatic watchlisting CSD deletions? Do you even make use of your watchlist? -- Ϫ 04:41, 29 December 2015 (UTC)
I have the "Add pages and files I delete to my watchlist" setting on, yes. Around one or two pop up a month. A bit more, if I've been speedying a lot of images recently; maybe 1 or 2% of files deleted for not having a source or license will get immediately reuploaded by the same user with the same problems after User:ImageRemovalBot takes them out of their articles. My actual displayed watchlist is quite manageable: "Below are the last 138 changes in the last 72 hours". —Cryptic 06:50, 29 December 2015 (UTC)
164. I try to keep the number as low as possible, but I'm surprised that I have so few pages compared to others. Biblioworm 17:18, 24 December 2015 (UTC)
I've got 2,627 on mine. Most of them got watchlisted because of my initial twinkle configurations. -- Chamith (talk) 17:31, 24 December 2015 (UTC)
I've got 2,738 at the moment, which is about twice as many as I could keep up with. The median number of watchlisted pages for all accounts is zero. WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:17, 26 December 2015 (UTC)
I prune periodically, and try to keep it around 1000. — xaosflux Talk 16:27, 27 December 2015 (UTC)
179, only 70 of them articles. See no evil. ―Mandruss ☎ 18:20, 27 December 2015 (UTC)
19,966. I have the option set to add pages I edit to my watchlist and so they accumulate over time. Andrew D. (talk) 23:23, 27 December 2015 (UTC)
This is exactly how mine has grown so large, making it much less useful as it's hard to keep up with all the edits, but in a way I also kind of like it because it keeps me returning back to Wikipedia to check again and again. But, 19966! Man that's a lot. Do you even bother checking every page or do you just scan it periodically and see if anything interesting pops out? -- Ϫ 05:04, 29 December 2015 (UTC)
  • 800, as of this post. I watchlist all articles I create or substantially expand, and the rest are discussions and nominations I'm participating in, and whatnot. --Jakob (talk) aka Jakec 19:42, 28 December 2015 (UTC)
  • 609 at the moment; includes a bunch of fluff. I'm pretty good about keeping my watchlist minimal, but stuff creeps in and some auto-watchlisting options I've got set have added a large number of infrequently-edited pages. {{Nihiltres |talk |edits}} 20:27, 28 December 2015 (UTC)
  • Mine is creeping up to 10,000 (again). This happened before and I nuked it....and then stuff happened to articles I forgot to re-watch but meh, that happens. It times out sometimes and will likely nuke it soon. Cas Liber (talk · contribs) 23:49, 28 December 2015 (UTC)
    I really should just do this too.. -- Ϫ 05:06, 29 December 2015 (UTC)
  • 20,811 pages on my watchlist (excluding all the talk pages on it). If I load it every 24 hours it usually contains about about 300 entries which take about 5 minutes to scan through. Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 09:49, 29 December 2015 (UTC)
  • Currently between about 2,700 to 2,8000 I would estimate (give or take), consisting of constant removals of closed AfDs, expired PRODs and speedied articles. Within the last month, I cleaned it considerably (removing about 400) after it got to 3,000. SwisterTwister talk 06:40, 5 January 2016 (UTC)

Disruptive editor

Hello. User 1.39.49.93 (talk · contribs) has made several edits today, mostly just deleting photos that didn't need deleting. I reverted most of the edits, but 4 edits were made to sex-related articles, which I don't feel comfortable editing. If someone there wants to have a look at this editor's contributions I'd appreciate it. Thank you. Magnolia677 (talk) 13:43, 29 December 2015 (UTC)

All have been reviewed. Alsee (talk) 05:25, 5 January 2016 (UTC)

Archive external links

Hello. Is there an easy way to archive the external links of an article? I used to do this by hand, one by one. But it takes time. Xaris333 (talk) 06:49, 4 January 2016 (UTC)

You can use a JSON query, for example on random page Groundscraper, enter this URL to query all the external links. — xaosflux Talk 19:15, 4 January 2016 (UTC)
@Xaris333: — xaosflux Talk 19:16, 4 January 2016 (UTC)

Request for comment notice: ExxonMobil among most vocal climate change deniers

 You are invited to join the discussion at Talk:ExxonMobil#Request for comment: ExxonMobil among most vocal climate change deniers. Thanks. Hugh (talk) 21:14, 5 January 2016 (UTC)

RfC notice: Nations and intelligence

Please comment on Talk:Nations_and_intelligence#rfc:_Lead_section. --The Master (talk) 03:44, 6 January 2016 (UTC)

Wikimania 2016: call for proposals extended

Dear Wikimedians,
the deadline for the call for proposals for Wikimania 2016 has been moved on 17th January 2016, so you have 10 days to submit you proposal(s). To submit a presentation, please refer to the Submissions page on the Wikimania 2016 website. --Yiyi (Dimmi!) 09:48, 7 January 2016 (UTC)

An interesting article about the propagation of ignorance

As our mission here is the gathering of knowledge, I thought this article might be of interest here - Kenyon, Georgina (2016-01-06). "The man who studies the spread of ignorance". www.bbc.com. It touches on various issues that (imho) should matter to the WP community. Roger (Dodger67) (talk) 15:00, 9 January 2016 (UTC)

Thanks for sharing, interesting read.--S Philbrick(Talk) 21:59, 9 January 2016 (UTC)

M Magazine

I have turned M Magazine into a disambiguation page, however I am not sure whether the current title of M (magazine) is appropriate or what it should be renamed to. And perhaps the redlink M Magazine (U.S.) could have a better name too, as the former is a U.S. magazine too. I would appreciate advice on this. nyuszika7h (talk) 19:26, 10 January 2016 (UTC)

You could open a WP:Requested move discussion on M (magazine). A "U.S." disambiguator would only be needed if there are other "M Magazines" in other countries. Personally, I think the current title is fine, though you might get people to agree to M magazine (no parentheses) in a RM discussion... --IJBall (contribs • talk) 00:24, 11 January 2016 (UTC)
Also, FWIW, your current "disambiguation page" – M Magazine – isn't needed, as the other 3 choices are redlinks (i.e. no articles): disambig. pages are only supposed to be created to aid in reader navigation which isn't an issue in this case. I think you might turn that back into a redirect... --IJBall (contribs • talk) 00:30, 11 January 2016 (UTC)
@IJBall: The article title seems to suggests it is called just M, in that case the current title is fine, but the lead says M Magazine. Also, I created the disambiguation page because many people were linking to that article when they really meant one of the other three magazines (I removed those links), and this may aid in people/bots finding those mistakes. nyuszika7h (talk) 13:46, 11 January 2016 (UTC)
Actually, now I understand what you were saying here. In that case I might turn it back into a redirect, the other two were less common (maybe even just one article each, I don't remember). nyuszika7h (talk) 13:50, 11 January 2016 (UTC)
It should be fixed now, sorry for the confusion. nyuszika7h (talk) 14:00, 11 January 2016 (UTC)

Edit link for revisions

If one views an old revision, there is a functional "Edit" link at the top. If they edit the revision, it reverts all edits made after the time of that revision. I've done this unintentionally once, and I've seen it done once by another editor. In the latter case, it would have gone unnoticed had I not noticed the problem three days after the fact (by which time it was un-undoable and somewhat difficult to fix). Is there a legitimate need for this Edit link? ―Mandruss ☎ 01:59, 11 January 2016 (UTC)

I note that there is a red warning about this at the top of the edit session. In the above-cited two cases, that wasn't enough to prevent the mistake. It seems unlikely that I and the other editor are the only two idiots editing Wikipedia, and we should be idiot-proof wherever possible. ―Mandruss ☎ 02:08, 11 January 2016 (UTC)

It is useful to be able to view the wikicode, and sometimes it can legitimately be OK to restore an older version. Of course, this could be accomplished by cut-and-pasting the old wikicode from a "View source" of that revision with a link to the old version in the edit summary. Fences&Windows 22:08, 11 January 2016 (UTC)
When I want to restore an old revision (i.e., revert the most recent n edits), I view the diff of the last edit I want to keep and click the "restore this version" link on the right side. This is much harder to do by mistake (in my case, I simply forgot I was viewing an old revision). It is also much more apparent when you do, automatically beginning the edit summary with "‎Reverted to revision revnum by username". I believe this requires you to enable WP:Twinkle, but that's easy to do. If someone is so new that they have trouble enabling Twinkle, they probably lack sufficient competence to restore old revisions. ―Mandruss ☎ 22:18, 11 January 2016 (UTC)
Changing the "Edit older version" to "View older version source" could a a reasonable change. This page would have "Restore" and "Edit" buttons, which would allow changes. --NaBUru38 (talk) 22:20, 12 January 2016 (UTC)

Redirects

Could anyone point me toward a tool that would give some statistics as to whether pages are found by readers directly or through a redirect page. I am looking to do some analysis as to whether we are using common names or not. WCMemail 19:06, 14 January 2016 (UTC)

Away until Thursday.

I will be away for a few days. Normally, I would ask that you have Wikipedia finished by the time I return, but I will be more modest this time, and merely ask that all the disambiguation links be fixed. Cheers! bd2412 T 18:56, 10 January 2016 (UTC)

Glad to see you came to your senses, we were worried about you. Sorry to report that we all left until Thursday too, so the disambiguation links didn't get fixed. ―Mandruss ☎ 04:14, 15 January 2016 (UTC)

an ingenie, a libre patent

 
libreidea drawing

Bonjour,

I manage a project called LibreIdea since August 2014.

It s a wikipedia of ideas (we called them ingenies) and research questions with the goal to create a collaborative tool of progress.

Our main objective is to create cocis that will assist us to create ideas.

Vev (talk) 22:51, 14 January 2016 (UTC)

eh. Hello Vev Anthere (talk)

About WADA (World Anti-Doping Agency) and associated articles

The second major WADA (World Anti-Doping Agency) report into corruption etc has made front page headlines over the past few days. It is a major issue. But the WADA article and those associated with it have received virtually no edits at all. I've spent some time today updating Lamine Diack (head of the IAAF for sixteen years). But otherwise, it's virtually nothing. At. All.

Astonishing, eh? Maybe not. It reflects how it is that so many editors spend time editing pages of subjects that they are themselves interested in, such as the hundreds (probably) that have been editing David Bowie since Monday morning.

Though I wouldn't mind doing so, I simply don't have the time to update all the relevant articles, so I'm drawing the attention of whoever is reading this to the situation. As things stand, I think it reflects rather badly on Wikipedia.

Incidentally, in case you're thinking that this situation is only something occurring this week, or in the case of relevant Wiki editing, not occurring this week, if you look at Doping in sport you'll find that the headline-grabbing Sunday Times feature of a few months ago doesn't get one mention. Seriously! It seems that this whole area in athletics - and it is a major one - just doesn't raise the interest of those who are Wiki editors. And it also suggests that some wholesale updates are necessitated.

Now I know that Wiki editing is voluntary, no-one needs to point that out to me, but... Boscaswell (talk) 16:44, 15 January 2016 (UTC)

Writing contest: 15 days to create (at least) 15 biographies on notable African women!

Hello

Today, Wikipedia celebrate its 15 years anniversary.

However ... even after 15 years, content about Africa in general, and African women in particular, is still limited on the world's largest source of knowledge. For this reason, it was important to some of us to celebrate Wikipedia 15 by organising a bilingual (English/French) writing contest to increase the number of notable African women that are covered on Wikipedia. This contest is also meant as a starting point of m:Wiki Loves Women, a content liberation project related to Women in Africa in 6 countries.

We would love to see you participate to the writing contest !
If you want to, there are 3 ways to participate

It is all meant to be an easy going contest... no hassle... just for the pleasure of working together on a theme still little covered on Wikipedia

Anthere (talk) 11:36, 15 January 2016 (UTC)

  • Anthere, what do I win for Vera Songwe? Drmies (talk) 15:49, 15 January 2016 (UTC)
    • I do not know yet Drmies. That is... my appreciation certainly ! Thank you ! Let's see in 2 weeks time for details :) hmmm... any picture to illustrate the article ? Categories ? Unorphan it ? Fix sources ? Anthere (talk)

About the management of the Heroine and Hero pages

Hi everybody, We are gathering right now in the context of the event Heroines organized by Just for the Record. We are discussing about the best way to think about the distinction between the terms hero and heroine. If you are interested in this discussion, you are welcomed to follow and participate to it on the Hero talk page.Léonie Butler (talk) 14:49, 15 January 2016 (UTC)

I hope people aren't really going to be complaining that we don't have separate pages for "heroine" versus "hero", after the relatively recent controversy about us having separate categories for "women writers" and stuff like the societal controversy over whether to use "actors" or "actresses" to refer to women who act. Anomie⚔ 16:35, 16 January 2016 (UTC)

Anniversary question

What were the first articles on Wikipedia? Jackiespeel (talk) 22:24, 15 January 2016 (UTC)

See WP:Wikipedia's oldest articles. Cheers.  DiscantX 22:22, 16 January 2016 (UTC)

Russian propaganda

Gentlemen, may I inquire about the Russian propaganda article? For what reason it has been replaced with a redirect? There is in Ukrainian Wikipedia a imposing article that pins accusations upon the Russian, in particular, upon the Russian publicity machine. I ask for the explanations.

Yours sincerely

--В.Галушко (talk) 23:42, 16 January 2016 (UTC)

  • User:В.Галушко, it was redirected to Propaganda since the article was not neutral at all, poorly translated, and impossible to understand. If you want to have a go at fixing it, follow the link above, then click the "redirected from" text that appears below the article title; this will allow you to overwrite the redirect with a new article. Oiyarbepsy (talk) 00:01, 17 January 2016 (UTC)
Why does not neutral? Please, read the Ukrainian version (it's possible to use a translator) and write me about the appropriateness of translating thereof. But the English-speaking do love Ukraine, you know it is on the way to the Democracy and Human Rights unlike Russia, isn't that so?
Yours sincerely
--В.Галушко (talk) 00:15, 17 January 2016 (UTC)

Defining nature of the "terrorism victims" category

I'm not an expert on categorization, so I thought I'd ask around: why do we have categories such as Category:Terrorism victims and its subcats (victims of specific attacks or sorts of terrorism)? Per WP:DEFINING, only defining attributes of people should be categorized. But being a terrorism victim is normally not defining, because most terror attacks strike people more or less at random. People are usually not notable for being terrorism victims alone (WP:BIO1E), so whatever makes them notable is normally something else that they are more appropriately categorized for.  Sandstein  12:12, 17 January 2016 (UTC)

Categorization is intended for navigation purposes; it is not restricted to what makes a person notable. Praemonitus (talk) 20:21, 17 January 2016 (UTC)
"People are usually not notable for being terrorism victims alone".
I would think otherwise. of course not every terrorism victim is notable. But being a terrorism victim is typically a defining attribute. --NaBUru38 (talk) 18:58, 18 January 2016 (UTC)

Notification of ip editors

Do IP editors receive notifications regarding the rollback or reversion of their edits, particularly in cases of vandalism? I can't help wondering whether this is desirable behaviour or not, as it seems to encourage re-reverting. --ℕ ℱ 22:45, 17 January 2016 (UTC)

Users who are unregistered or not logged in do not receive these notifications, per the third paragraph at Wikipedia:Notifications. This also includes other types of notifications such as those produced by templates such as {{ping}}, by the way. The only way to "notify" an IP editor of anything is via their user talk page (which uses a different mechanism from that described on the previously linked page). ―Mandruss ☎ 05:12, 18 January 2016 (UTC)

Vancouver style error in a footnote in the article Lord Morton's mare

Please correct the error. 206.47.112.137 (talk) 05:02, 18 January 2016 (UTC)

Fixed it by switching away from use of the Vancouver-style vauthors parameter. {{Nihiltres |talk |edits}} 05:51, 18 January 2016 (UTC)

Request for comment

Your attention is called to Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Cities#Request for comment, where a discussion is being held concerning the Sherman Oaks, Los Angeles, article. BeenAroundAWhile (talk) 19:39, 20 January 2016 (UTC)

Could use more editors to resolve some issues on an article

We have some issues over at the article Paleolithic diet that i think could use some more editors with fresh eyes and some fresh input to see what's going on and what may need some help moving discussions forward. If you have some time to take a look, i appreciate it. I'm posting this as suggested at WP:CONSENSUS as a way to help when there seems to be a logjam in consensus building. There is suggests posting on the Village Pump where "Neutrally worded notification of a dispute here also may bring in additional editors who may help." So that's what i've done here, to see if it may attract some editors who have time. I've also posted at WP:NPOVN but got little response from there so far. SageRad (talk) 16:17, 20 January 2016 (UTC)

If you're referring to Talk:Paleolithic diet#NPOV tag removed, I'd open an RfC on that page. Like this thread, it would get wider participation including editors who don't "have a dog in the fight". Unlike this, its added structure would make it easier to see any consensus that develops. ―Mandruss ☎ 22:58, 20 January 2016 (UTC)

Criticism articles + Praise articles = Reception articles

The project has three core content policies one of which is NPOV, the policy which is briefly explained as such: "All Wikipedia articles and other encyclopedic content must be written from a neutral point of view, representing significant views fairly, proportionately and without bias." Looking into criticism type articles, one will find that those articles are not written from a neutral point of view because not all significant views are presented "fairly, proportionately and without bias." Yes, there are some notable views from notable figures, but they are not the whole story. To fix this problem I propose to act based on Wikipedia:Criticism and avoid having separate articles on criticisms besides having no stand alone article on 'praise'. Instead, we may create articles entitled ' Reception of X '. This way, we can gather all the viewpoints and there's a chance to have a 'balanced' and 'neutral' article. Mhhossein (talk) 13:11, 6 January 2016 (UTC)

This had come long ago, but keep in mind the term "criticism" is not necessarily meaning negative criticism but of any type. Criticism can be positive. Also, we can't force a false balance. If X is only negatively criticized by RS, we cant force positive criticism into the article, though we can include counterpoints to existing criticism. --MASEM (t) 13:28, 6 January 2016 (UTC)
MASEM: I think, criticism is mainly done to express the negative points. So, I would say 'positive judgement' instead of ' positive criticism'. Personally, I've never seen a positive criticism but have encountered constructive ones! Some rare cases are only negatively/positively criticized, assuming the existence of 'positive criticism'. Per WP:NPOV we have to balance the articles using the RS which is another way of saying: "...though we can include counterpoints to existing criticism." Having the above definitions, the articles containing both positive and negative points would better not be called 'criticism of X or Y'. Mhhossein (talk) 19:33, 6 January 2016 (UTC)
Just as some points of reference, previous discussions are here: [32], [33], [34], and [35]. --MASEM (t) 21:45, 6 January 2016 (UTC)
To follow on , I do want to point out these discussions were mainly about the titling, not content. What I do want to be clear is that because of NPOV/UNDUE, if all of the secondary commentary/criticism is of a negative type, and there does not exist a usable RS to give a positive stance, we can't change that the tone of such an article is going to be negative. So just changing "Criticism of X" to "Reception of X" is not suddenly going to change the balance that didn't exist before. And "reception" is not always the best wording here. I do agree that if the RSes have more balance of positive and negative reactions, maybe "Criticism" isn't the best word but it is appropriate if the reactions are mostly negative. --MASEM (t) 21:54, 6 January 2016 (UTC)
MASEM: Thanks for your guidance, I swam through the sea of those discussions and found some valuable points berried there. As I said before, the cases are mostly covered negatively and positively by sources so a proper scheme should be devised. I'd like to ping the editors who were participating that discussion and are active now;@Shanes, Fences and windows, Tryptofish, Casliber, SDY, Pmanderson, Blueboar, and Bus stop: The thread you made here is long enough I'd like you to put the opinions in a nut shell. Finally, what should we do with criticism articles? Mhhossein (talk) 12:34, 7 January 2016 (UTC)
  • Thank you for asking me. My nutshell opinion is that the issue needs to be considered on a case-by-case basis, page by page. I do not believe that all "Criticism of" pages are good, and I do not believe that they are all bad, or should all be discouraged. Sometimes, editors may reach a consensus that a particular page is unavoidably a WP:POV fork, and needs to be deleted or merged. Other times, such a page has genuine encyclopedic value, and may only need to be edited for compliance with NPOV. --Tryptofish (talk) 18:29, 7 January 2016 (UTC)
  • I checked back to see what other editors have been saying, and I agree with other editors that "Reception of" can be a good improvement. I continue to think, however, that this isn't a case of one-size-fits-all. --Tryptofish (talk) 18:14, 12 January 2016 (UTC)
  • Thanks for the ping. My view of "Criticism of..." articles and sections is that they are best titled "Reception of..." and should include positive as well as negative reception/critiques. If the topic of critiquing a subject is itself notable it should have an article, or if a "Reception of..." section gets too large it can be spun out and summarised in the main article. Fences&Windows 22:04, 8 January 2016 (UTC)
  • I also agree they should be titled ' Reception of X ' as 'Criticism..' while sometimes means both positive and negative but too often has negative connotation. Cas Liber (talk · contribs) 08:33, 10 January 2016 (UTC)
  • I think ' Reception of X ' looks better, as well.--Seyyed(t-c) 06:20, 11 January 2016 (UTC)
  • It's hard to make any conclusions at a meta-level. In most cases, if we have an article about a thing it makes little sense to have a separate article about people's commentary, reception, or criticism of the thing. It's all the same subject. If it doesn't belong in the main article, it doesn't belong in a sub article. On the other hand, things like art, philosophical positions, and systems of government are all the subject of bodies of criticism (or critique, or detraction, or whatever). Popular websites are not usually the subject of a body of criticism, but there may be a locus of controversy sufficient to write an article not about people's opinions but about a group of controversies. It really depends on context, and on individual articles. We can't just sit back here on a meta page and tell people what's right for their particular subject area. - Wikidemon (talk) 07:41, 11 January 2016 (UTC)
Wikidemon: Thanks for your participation. Could you please bring examples from both groups? Mhhossein (talk) 13:30, 11 January 2016 (UTC)
  • I hae to agree with Wikidemon here that we can't readily adopt a one-size-fits-all. For example Criticism of the Catholic Church is really a proper name for that article, and you'll note that most of the areas where there is criticism, there is also counterpoint to that criticism making it a fairly neutral approach, given that we have several pages otherwise devoid of criticism or reception of the Church. To call it "Reception of the Catholic Church" is really a bad idea. Arguable, "Reception" should only apply to published works, while concepts and ideas like the Church or Criticism of capitolism really need to stay to "Criticism". --MASEM (t) 18:26, 12 January 2016 (UTC)
  • MASEM: There are concerns over both 'content' and the 'title'. Regarding the neutrality, I checked your example and I found some counter opinions beside the criticisms which was an effort to maintain the neutrality (although I still think it suffers from POV issues), while the problem with the title is still sitting there. As you know, "while "criticism" can mean opinions either way on a given topic, the word is nearly always taken in common terms to be negative facets and draw in undesirable OR, POV, and other issues that magnify the problem," and this is while the title has also to comply with neutrality. Mhhossein (talk) 04:32, 13 January 2016 (UTC)
  • But in most of those cases "Criticism" still remains the best word in the English language to describe the content, recognizing that while it generally implies negative opinions, it is not necessearily limited to that. Further, let's consider that most of these Criticism of X articles are where the topic itself is already a large article or a number of articles. If we considered the collection of all these articles together, that is how we should evaluate if there's an NPOV aspect or not. If there are, say, 20 pages about the Catholic church and only one that is primarily negative criticism of it, that's a fair balance. That's why looking only to the bounds of the specific article is not always the best solution. --MASEM (t) 06:00, 13 January 2016 (UTC)
  • MASEM: What I got from the first parts of your words was that the word "criticism" generally implies a negative meaning which is, I think, the motivation behind multiple attempts for fixing the neutrality problem brought by it. To the best of my knowledge, all the contents on Wikipedia must be written from a neutral point of view which means that every page has to be considered separately when it comes to evaluation. So, I have to say that the second part of your words which is assuming "those separated pages on the topic" is not in accordance with the policies. Article 1 on X is positive and article on X is negative, we can't consider a collection of them. In fact both of them suffer from neutrality problems. Mhhossein (talk) 18:02, 16 January 2016 (UTC)
  • That's not true, as another type of common article are "list of awards for X" where X may be a person or a published work, which in contrast to criticism articles, are praise articles. But content wise, we consider that as a spinoff of the main topic. So yes, we do not consider articles singularly if the topic spans several. There's still NPOV issues that can occur here: if the article only presents criticism and does not include published counterpoints, that's a coatrack. --MASEM (t) 18:08, 16 January 2016 (UTC)
  • I was discussing based on the policies (which says how the articles should be) not based on "how the articles are now". "list of awards for X" are not necessarily praise articles, even if they are, we'd better still adhere to the policies. Mhhossein (talk) 06:01, 17 January 2016 (UTC)
  • Waiting for MASEM's feedback. Mhhossein (talk) 13:33, 20 January 2016 (UTC)
  • It still comes down to the fact that a "Criticism of X" article which presents primarily negative critique of the topic but includes counterpoints or other sourced debate is neither a violation of NPOV, nor has a better name associated with it. If the only article on topic X is the Criticism article, that's a problem overall, but I doubt this is the case for any of these articles. --MASEM (t) 15:08, 20 January 2016 (UTC)
  • I think this goes back to the definition of "criticism", and using the one provided above, the context in which the term is used matters greatly to its interpreted meaning. Clearly, when the term is used in conjunction with art, literature, and film, then the definition that should apply is the second one listed: "the ​act of giving ​your ​opinion or ​judgment about the good or ​bad ​qualities of something or someone, ​especially ​books, ​films, etc." Perhaps one's life experiences with the term may result in a different interpretation from one person to the next, but the definition here is clear. It is not meant to only encapsulate negative judgment. I'm not convinced there is a dire need to change from "criticism" to "reception", and no doubt trying to discourage its use (e.g., at WP:MOS) will likely create confusion and possibly a lot of unnecessary work policing its use. --GoneIn60 (talk) 19:37, 12 January 2016 (UTC)
  • I don't like articles that have a "Criticism" section where each paragraph says: "A person/organization said/did something, which draw controversy."
Those sections shouldn't be presented as "Criticism", but as opinions or actions of the respective person / organization: "A person/organization said/did something. B criticised A for some reason, whereas C agreed with A."
--NaBUru38 (talk) 22:17, 12 January 2016 (UTC)

A conclusion

I read the above comments and would like to present them briefly. Mhhossein (talk) 13:29, 27 January 2016 (UTC)

The comments by editors are as such:

  • Casliber, Sa.vakilian and Fences and windows supported having 'Reception of X' articles which contain both positive and negative views.
  • Masem thinks that we can't have an one-size-fits-all rule. He thinks that He the word 'criticism' is nearly always taken in common terms to be negative facets and draw in undesirable OR, POV, and other issues. He also thinks that "Criticism of X" article which presents primarily negative critique of the topic but includes counterpoints or other sourced debate is neither a violation of NPOV, nor has a better name associated with it.
  • Tryptofish: While he thinks that "Reception of X" is a good improvement he believes that the issue needs to be considered on a case-by-case basis.
  • Wikidemon thinks that it really depends on the context, and on individual articles (we can't have an one-size-fits-all rule).
  • GoneIn60 is not convinced there is a dire need to change from "criticism" to "reception" and thinks that trying to discourage the use of 'criticism' (e.g., at WP:MOS) will likely create confusion and possibly a lot of unnecessary work policing its use.
  • NaBUru38 is against having 'criticism' articles or sections disagrees with the presentation of those sections.

It's good that there's a "Criticism" which contains lots of good points and presents a mixture of the above comments. As the above comments show, most of the editors either agree on having 'reception of X' or conditionally avoiding 'criticism of X' articles which is widely discussed there. But really why not trying to have the essay as a guideline (as you see it has gained some supporters)? Mhhossein (talk) 18:56, 27 January 2016 (UTC) (edited Mhhossein (talk) 06:32, 30 January 2016 (UTC))

Hello, I didn't say I'm against having "Criticism" sections. I said that I disagree with the presentation of those sections. --NaBUru38 (talk) 15:25, 28 January 2016 (UTC)
Sorry NaBUru38, I was confused by the way you'd commented (I had to be more careful). I corrected the sentence. Mhhossein (talk) 06:32, 30 January 2016 (UTC)

It's not too late...

Well folks, I've just seen this statistic, which highlights the importance of improving leads. Still time to enter Wikipedia:Take the lead! as each entry has a chance of winning an Amazon voucher :) Cheers, Cas Liber (talk · contribs) 21:37, 24 January 2016 (UTC)

A good example is Burial, where the hatnote paragraph is longer than the lead. :-) Praemonitus (talk) 17:45, 25 January 2016 (UTC)
I fixed Burial. ~ ONUnicorn(Talk|Contribs)problem solving 16:06, 26 January 2016 (UTC)

Pre-production starts for Wikipedia and Wikimedia Commons tutorial videos

We are excited that pre-production has started for a series of motivational and educational videos that will introduce Wikipedia and some of its sister projects to new contributors.

Over the past several years, many videos have been produced to train new contributors. This series will feature VisualEditor and the new citation tool called Citoid. Additionally, the series will include an introduction to the Wikimedia Commons repository of freely-licensed media.

The video series and associated materials will help students and instructors who participate in the Wikipedia Education Program. The series is also designed to assist the professional staff and volunteers of galleries, libraries, archives, and museums (GLAMs) with understanding how their content gains exposure on Wikimedia sites, and how to document or upload their content for direct viewing on Wikipedia and its sister projects.

The video content will be available in segments that can be viewed, translated, or updated individually.

There are currently volunteer translators for Arabic, Armenian, Czech, German, Greek, Odia, and Spanish. Additional volunteers with high proficiency translation skills are welcome to sign up on the talk page.

We are currently seeking feedback on the outline for the scripts, as well as suggestions for an attractive name for the series. Please leave any comments on this talk page!

Regards,

Pine✉

Series director and screenwriter

Notes

This series is funded by an individual engagement grant from the Wikimedia Foundation. A big thanks to the community, the IEG Committee, and WMF for their support.

Future IdeaLab Campaigns results

 

Last December, I invited you to help determine future ideaLab campaigns by submitting and voting on different possible topics. I'm happy to announce the results of your participation, and encourage you to review them and our next steps for implementing those campaigns this year. Thank you to everyone who volunteered time to participate and submit ideas.

With great thanks,

I JethroBT (WMF), Community Resources, Wikimedia Foundation. 23:49, 26 January 2016 (UTC)

Hello

Please note that Ihor Zaytsev died on 28 january according to Google. Thank you. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 109.185.175.84 (talk) 15:02, 28 January 2016 (UTC)

Missing deleted pages warning

I used to see a pink box when I hit a redlink that lead to a deleted subjectspace page, now I see an empty page like all other pages that have never been created. Is this broken CSS on Wikipedia's end, or is this an intentional Wikipedia end-user display change? -- 70.51.200.135 (talk) 05:52, 30 January 2016 (UTC)

This was a deliberate change. For performance reasons, readers who haven't logged in are shown the pink box only when the page was deleted very recently. There was an announcement with the technical details, but I can't immediately think how to find it! -- John of Reading (talk) 07:43, 30 January 2016 (UTC)
(More) Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)/Archive 141#red box with deletion-log no longer visible (to some wikipedians) , unless deletion was "within the last 24 hours" -- John of Reading (talk) 07:55, 30 January 2016 (UTC)

Proposed WMF board resolution on the unreliability of Wikipedia

I've asked the WMF board of trustees to pass a resolution (a) acknowledging that Wikipedia (among other WMF properties) is not reliable and (b) encouraging the WMF to support initiatives aimed at improving the reliability of Wikipedia (and other WMF properties).

Please have your say here. --Anthonyhcole (talk · contribs · email) 14:51, 1 February 2016 (UTC)

Review for user page

Hi guys. I'm a fairly regular editor of Wikipedia, and I was wondering if I could get some help or reviews of my user page. I'm looking to make in generally neater and nicer looking. I'm also learning HTML5 so if you want to put some suggestions on how to use the div tag for my user page that'd be great. Thanks in advance! Will2022 (talk) 14:29, 19 January 2016 (UTC)

Well, I guess you like things bright and colorful. The thing is though that it tends to distract the eye from actually reading your message. Sometimes less is more. Praemonitus (talk) 19:09, 20 January 2016 (UTC)
I'm sorry to say, one look at it drove me away so I wouldn't get a migraine from the text on the left-hand side in particular. It's not disability-accessible.
However, that's okay! To make a good page or anything, really, you have to have the courage to make a lot of bad ones at first and get feedback from others. So, learn from this, check out accessibility requirements (much but not all of which is just kind to your readers, anyway), and go forth and make your second bad page! Or tenth or whatever it is! Sooner or later, as people help, you'll get good at it. That's the WikiWay to me. — Geekdiva (talk) 09:33, 26 January 2016 (UTC)
Michael Jordan missed thousands of shots in practice before becoming a shooting star. Keep practising, a lot. --NaBUru38 (talk) 23:53, 1 February 2016 (UTC)

Wikipedia article traffic statistics

See linked thread; closing per WP:MULTI. --Izno (talk) 18:57, 4 February 2016 (UTC)

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

The Wikipedia article traffic statistics page at http://stats.grok.se/ stopped reporting information after January 20. (You can still see data up to and including that date, but nothing later.) What's going on? Michael Hardy (talk) 18:18, 4 February 2016 (UTC)

See Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)#Pageview stats has been down for the past 15 days. --Edgars2007 (talk/contribs) 18:47, 4 February 2016 (UTC)
The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

oxygen

Can anyone explain me something? in article Michał Sędziwój it is written that "He discovered that air is not a single substance and contains a life-giving substance-later called oxygen 170 years before similar discoveries by Scheele and Priestley." So why it isnt mentioned in article oxygen? Prywaciarz101 (talk) 15:31, 6 February 2016 (UTC)

@Prywaciarz101: Hopefully you will receive a response if you add this additional detail to Talk:Oxygen#Michał Sędziwój. GoingBatty (talk) 17:58, 6 February 2016 (UTC)

Hello

Died somebody on february 7? Thank you. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 109.185.175.84 (talk) 23:52, 7 February 2016 (UTC)

Quite a few people did, unfortunately. The Quixotic Potato (talk) 13:30, 9 February 2016 (UTC)
Deaths in 2016 lists 7 people who did. And many non-notable people undoubtedly also died on that day. עוד מישהו Od Mishehu 19:37, 9 February 2016 (UTC)

weed

What do u people think of cannabis? I think it should be legalized. — Preceding unsigned comment added by NeoBlitz (talk • contribs) 08:54, 10 February 2016 (UTC)

Please read Wikipedia:What_Wikipedia_is_not#FORUM. I don't know where you live but over here weed is semi-legal. The Quixotic Potato (talk) 09:08, 10 February 2016 (UTC)

Unusual file types

Special:MediaStatistics lists some file types that are banned on Commons. I took my wrong extension query and found these files:

Thoughts? — Dispenser 14:02, 12 February 2016 (UTC)

I don't understand several of those extensions, and what is the deal with "gif (application/x-php)"? However, assuming there is a technical explanation that these things could conceivably exploit the user's computer, they should all be deleted. One of the xls files I glanced at is from a very trustworthy user, but it is inherently impossible to trust xls given the astonishing number of vulnerabilities that have been found, and Wikipedia should not host such stuff. I guess the argument about mp3 relates to patents/free, and not exploits? Johnuniq (talk) 23:17, 12 February 2016 (UTC)

Pays, ville et circonstances

 
 

Bonjour,

My English is too bad for writing in this language.

Est-ce que cette photo a été prise " in vehicle meetings in North America " ?

Pouvez-vous indiquer dans quel état américain, dans quelle ville et à quelle occasion ? In California ? In Los Angeles ?

Merci d'avance. (LaVoiture-balai (talk) 20:49, 9 February 2016 (UTC))

Rough translation: Was this photograph taken in "Vehicle meetings in North America"? Would you indicate in what American State, what city, and what occasion? In California? In Los Angeles? Thank you in advance.
 

:::@PLawrence99cx: You are the one who took the photo; can you please answer this person's questions? LaVoiture Je suis désolé, mais je ne sais pas où la photo a été prise. Je l'ai demandé au photographe de répondre ici. ~ ONUnicorn(Talk|Contribs)problem solving 13:01, 10 February 2016 (UTC)

PLawrence99cx seems to be "in holidays". Another contributor has found the other photo of the same photograph with indications of CA and LA. A Californian could "certify" it and gave details of the occasion of this vehicle meeting. (LaVoiture-balai (talk) 18:05, 10 February 2016 (UTC))


I've asked WikiProject Automobiles and WikiProject California for their assistance. ~ ONUnicorn(Talk|Contribs)problem solving 16:59, 11 February 2016 (UTC)
Please ask them about this one as well, (Closer shot of the third vehicule in first image). Thanks--DDupard (talk) 17:52, 11 February 2016 (UTC)
I'm not an expert, but California requires license plates front and back, and most of these don't have license plates on the front (although one does, and it's a California plate). There might be a special rule for older cars, but my first guess is that this isn't in California). WhatamIdoing (talk) 01:30, 12 February 2016 (UTC)

I found one of the images posted on a gallery of the Citroën Car Club of Southern California (http://www.socalcitroen.com/gallery-1.html 7 of 10). But it gives no background or source, and is mixed in with photos that are obviously vintage and promotional. But I think this is the organization that put on the car show in the picture. I'm still looking Oiyarbepsy (talk) 07:27, 13 February 2016 (UTC)

I think this Flicker album is from the same event as the photos here - Citroën Rendezvous in Saratoga Springs, NY, on June 19, 2010. I don't see the any of the same cars, but this was clearly a very large gathering, and the scenery all looks the same. What do you think? (En Français (mal): Peut etre le Citroën Rendezvous en Saratoga Springs, NY, 19 Juni 2010?) Oiyarbepsy (talk) 07:45, 13 February 2016 (UTC)

@LaVoiture-balai:Je pense que c'est le Citroën Rendezvous en Saratoga Springs, New York, en été 2009 ou 2010. Oiyarbepsy (talk) 08:02, 13 February 2016 (UTC)

Bonjour to you all. Pardon me for not noticing this forum sooner. These pictures were taken in Los Angeles, California at the 'Best of France & Italy' show, which is held the first Sunday of every November. @LaVoiture-balai: PLawrence99cx (talk) 04:57, 6 June 2016 (UTC)

Tara (Drina)

Article Tara (Drina) should renamed in Tara (river), a article Tara River (Russia) in Tara (river in Russia). ..There and a river with the same name in Italy (article about her will be called Tara (river in Italy) — see: Tara#Rivers).
This article should be called only Tara (river) because river runs through two states (Montenegro and Bosnia and Herzegovina) and because what river passes through the largest canyon (Tara River Canyon) in Europe which is was named after her —— MilanKovacevic (talk) 15:00, 13 February 2016 (UTC)
I would tend to disagree, unless you can show that the common topic in English-language sources use this name; however, I just listed it at Talk:Tara (Drina)#Requested move 13 February 2016, where it will get more attention from users who tend to understand this topic better than me. עוד מישהו Od Mishehu 19:07, 13 February 2016 (UTC)

Are notice tags demotivating?

There are a lot of notice tags in Wikipedia article space that have been around for many years. I'm starting to suspect that they may actually be demotivating the correction of articles. For example, suppose an anonymous editor makes a correction to address a tag. Do they know whether they can remove the notice? Will they get slammed for removing it? The safer route may be to just leave it alone. Anonymous editors may actually feel less threatened about editing an article that has no warning notices.

Perhaps a statistical study would help? It could be helpful to know the percentage of useful non-bot edits to articles with tags, vs. those without. Another parameter that may be useful is the half-life for the various tags—what is the average duration for the pool of tags set in a given month to be reduced in half? Are some warning notices more likely to be addressed than others? Should we do away with some types of notices because they are not constructive? Praemonitus (talk) 19:50, 26 January 2016 (UTC)

@Praemonitus: Interesting thoughts! If someone were to be able to measure the "percentage of useful non-bot edits to articles with tags, vs. those without", would it be correct to infer that the tags are influencing behavior? Or would it be showing something else, such as topic popularity? Thanks! GoingBatty (talk) 21:43, 26 January 2016 (UTC)
Yes, perhaps a more thorough study would need to track other potentially correlating factors such as the rate of edits, size of the articles, average number of visits, &c. But with a sufficiently large sample population, hopefully some of those other factors would tend to average out. Or else robust statistics could be used, such as the median score. It might be an interesting project for somebody with a statistics background, if the data were available. Praemonitus (talk) 22:39, 26 January 2016 (UTC)
Maybe instead of a study, we should just take action on the idea that whether this exists or not, we suspect that tags don't do a great job of encouraging people to actually address the issue or of providing instructions on removal of the tag (which, itself, may deter some people from editing to fix the issue in the first place), but that this can be easily addressed with model language we can draft together, to be added to a wide variety of maintenance tags. This is just my preliminary thoughts, but I'm thinking something not unlike:

If you have the ability, please boldly assist Wikipedia by editing this page to remedy the flagged issue! All problems are fixed by the efforts of volunteers. If you've read the link provided explaining the problem, and have thoroughly fixed it, you may simply remove this maintenance template.

--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 23:09, 29 January 2016 (UTC)
Good point, although doing so may further inflate the size of the notice tage. Praemonitus (talk) 02:06, 30 January 2016 (UTC)
Excellent idea, Fuhghettaboutit! In my time on the Wikipedia IRC help channel, I have run into many new users for whom the current system is unintuitive. A common question is "I fixed the issue. Why is the tag still there?" It does not seem like it's obvious to new users that tags are added and removed manually. To keep it from getting wordy, maybe a link to a page explaining how to fix common issues and how to remove the tag? Howicus (Did I mess up?) 19:24, 9 February 2016 (UTC)
@Howicus: Great. I've run with your suggestion and created Help:Maintenance template removal. Please let me know what you think and make any obvious improvements. As provided at that page, I am suggesting it be placed in maintenance templates through a link labeled: "Learn how and when to remove this template".--02:18, 10 February 2016 (UTC)
@Fuhghettaboutit: Good idea, that. I was thinking it might be better to have a longer page that deals briefly with how to fix the more common types of templates. Howicus (Did I mess up?) 20:11, 12 February 2016 (UTC)

I would be interested to know if the issue relates to certain specific tags, but not others. I suspect that some tagged issues get addressed quickly, whole others may sit there never being fixed. Blueboar (talk) 23:37, 29 January 2016 (UTC)

True. One I find particularly nebulous is {{More footnotes}}. There is no criteria for removing it, and it could easily be placed on 90% of the articles here. Praemonitus (talk) 02:06, 30 January 2016 (UTC)
@Praemonitus: I would remove {{More footnotes}} if all of the references were inline citations and there were no external links that would be better as inline citations. GoingBatty (talk) 03:36, 30 January 2016 (UTC)
it could easily be placed on 90% of the articles here - So we should eliminate the most visible thing telling editors that we need more inline citations? It may be wishful thinking, but I have to believe that tag is having some significant beneficial effect, enough to make it a net positive. Not only in the individual articles, but toward evangelization of inline citations in general. ―Mandruss ☎ 05:25, 30 January 2016 (UTC)
Sorry, but as far as I can see this is purely wishful thinking. We have no evidence one way or another. It may simply function as nuisance graphics, or even deter useful updates. Praemonitus (talk) 20:20, 4 February 2016 (UTC)
  • As an editor I add varieties of ref needed tags often to highlight, and as a reader I am alerted quickly, where articles are lacking in verifiable validity. In both cases I find the notices useful.
The question of whether they are demotivating would IMO require testing analysis, but in my experience they are not. They grab my attention and inspire me to look at ways I might be able to improve the situation. I admit that often I don't feel fit to do much real good, but I'll frequently improve the notifications e.g instead of a bunch of 5 year old inline cite neededs, I'll add a ref imp sec or unref sec in the hope of kicking the article in the ass.
So although I'm not the greatest editor, I personally find the notices valuable.
The question of when it's time to remove them, and who feels comfortable doing it - I have, whenever I felt like it. fredgandt 12:57, 14 February 2016 (UTC)

How about an experiment

Here's a proposed experiment - Pick four of five maintenance tags and edit them so they place the article in the category but aren't visible on the page; do this for thirty days. Afterwards, restore the template to what it was before, and again, do this for 30 days. Monitor the categories and see how many IPs and new editors resolve the issues (which, I concede, is the hard part). Oiyarbepsy (talk) 02:01, 5 February 2016 (UTC)

That's good but I'd make a proposal first and make sure people know what's going on. I know that would bias the test but there's also WP:POINTy issues with just changing the tags for the purpose of testing the tagging system. I'd propose that we revise the tagging system entirely. Instead of tagging the front of a page, we should be tagging the talk page, and in particular the talk page section that allegedly discusses most concerns (POV, lack of sources maybe, BLP, COI, etc.). Most of those tags were added without any actual discussion on the page I often find. -- Ricky81682 (talk) 02:42, 10 February 2016 (UTC)
I don't like the idea of tagging the talk page instead of the article page. For one, it might serve to "hide" article issues from view. Many readers, though they may not know how to fix a tag, do know that a tag means "don't trust this page as much as you would others". And more importantly to me, following the blue links on maintenance tags provided me with my first look at the editing side of Wikipedia. Those visible tags are a big part of why I'm here today. That said, I would support something that encourages or requires an explanation for the less-straightforward tags (like NPOV tags, for example). Maybe a prompt upon tagging with a tool? Howicus (Did I mess up?) 20:19, 12 February 2016 (UTC)
I completely agree with the don't trust this page as much as you would others point. fredgandt 12:57, 14 February 2016 (UTC)
How hard would A/B testing be? Hide the tags (only on display; leave them in the code when people go to edit) for a certain percentage of page hits (maybe with an opt-out somewhere) and measure whether that has an effect on what percentage of hits convert into "edit" button clicks or completed edits? 97.93.100.146 (talk) 23:48, 13 February 2016 (UTC)
  • Instead of a live test; with 5 million articles, it should be relatively trivial to analyse the data as it stands about the interactivity of articles with un-noticed issues, and similar ones with notices.
Crunching the numbers we already have would cause zero disruption to the project, and done well, could provide at least a fairly good idea of whether notices have a detrimental effect. fredgandt 12:57, 14 February 2016 (UTC)

Wikipedia not in the top 10 US digital media properties

According to this post, Wikipedia is not in the top 10 US digital media properties for October 2015, which surprised me. So how far down is Wikipedia? GoingBatty (talk) 20:05, 3 February 2016 (UTC)


Is Wikipedia actually a "media property"? The term is typical marketing jargon, so seeing as we never carry advertising they wouldn't even look at us as a "property". Roger (Dodger67) (talk) 21:23, 3 February 2016 (UTC)
That page is ranking based on number users. How many does Wikipedia have? I looked at Special:ListUsers, but it doesn't say how many there are. RudolfRed (talk) 21:26, 3 February 2016 (UTC)
Sounds like you want Special:Statistics. --71.119.131.184 (talk) 22:04, 3 February 2016 (UTC)
The Foundation is based in San Francisco, but the editor community is worldwide.
Wikimedia used to have 500 billion unique visitors. --NaBUru38 (talk) 17:23, 10 February 2016 (UTC)
Which is about 70 times the number of humans on the planet. Is "separate visits per year" a fair translation of that jargon? WhatamIdoing (talk) 01:26, 12 February 2016 (UTC)
Oops, I meant 500 million unique visitors. --NaBUru38 (talk) 17:38, 14 February 2016 (UTC)
Aliens. It has to be. NASA can't explain it.... Oh, it's a typo. Praemonitus (talk) 20:40, 15 February 2016 (UTC)
According to Alexa [37] which the Wikipedia article List of most popular websites is based on Wikipedia is number 7. On the Internet, nobody knows you're a dog so I guess the number of users could be 500 billion ;-) Dmcq (talk) 21:24, 15 February 2016 (UTC)

What good faith is not

My apologies for wasting the time of those for whom this is not necessary. I'm not speaking to you. But I've run across too many editors, even many with some experience, who misapply WP:AGF because they do not know the meaning of the words "good faith".
Per the Merriam-Webster dictionary entry, good faith is about honesty. It has absolutely nothing to do with good reasoning, good judgment, or good competence. If someone offers constructive criticism or advice, or even if they accuse you of a shortage of competence, feel free to disagree with them. But, please, do not respond by accusing them of failing to observe WP:AGF. Thanks. ―Mandruss ☎ 06:00, 14 February 2016 (UTC)

The policy explicitly agrees with this. For example, here are some quotes:
assume that people who work on the project are trying to help it, not hurt it.
When dealing with possible copyright violations, good faith means assuming that editors intend to comply with site policy and the law. That is different from assuming they have actually complied with either.
Additionally, we have an essay called Wikipedia:Assume the assumption of good faith. עוד מישהו Od Mishehu 13:17, 14 February 2016 (UTC)

Announcing the Winners of the Wiki Loves Women #15Challenge Writing Contest

On the 15th January 2016, Wikipedia celebrated its 15 years of existence. But ... even after 15 years, the content on Africa in general - and African women in particular - remains limited. The Wiki Loves Women project decided to celebrate the 15th anniversary of Wikipedia by organising the bilingual (English and French) #15Challenge Writing Contest to increase the number of biographies of notable African women. We asked for 15 teams to create 15 articles on notable African women. These are the results... At the end of the contest,

  • 15 Anglophone teams (27 participants)
  • 18 Francophone teams (24 participants)
  • and 1 team (4 participants) from Armenian (completely unexpected ... but so very welcome!)

produced no less than ...

This result is way beyond our expectations! And so incredibly amazing! The tireless jurors were Jane023, FloNight, Smirkybec, and Isla Haddow for the English articles, and Vikoula5, Laurent Jerry and Anthere for the French articles.

The final winners were ....

 
Wiki Loves Women barnstar

For the English contest

  • Best English article: Malouma from Team Women in Red (User:Ipigott, User:Megalibrarygirl, User:Rosiestep, User:SusunW, and User:1bandsaw). This article already achieved Good Article status!
  • Best English team: goes to Team Women in Red. This is probably the best moment to advertise the Women in Red initiative … their objective is to turn redlinks into blue ones within the scope of women’s biographies and women’s works.
  • Best team work by newbies: Team Queer Mbokodo Lead (User:LameOlebile, User:DMailosi, User:mugothescribe – all newbies), who wrote an article on South African activist and academic Zethu Matebeni
  • Best African team effort: goes to Team Ghana (User:Rberchie, Utilisateur:B, User:Celestinesucess, User:Sandiooses) who wrote 16 articles (mostly just above stub class)
  • Best individual effort: goes to Team Adrienne de La Fayette with 32 articles written by User:duckduckstop

For the French Contest

  • Best article: Nozizwe Madlala-Routledge de Cbyd et HenriDavel (Equipe Parce-qu'elles-le-valent-bien)
  • Best team: 'Equipe Parce-qu’elles-le-valent-bien with Cbyd and HenriDavel for writing no less than 30 articles (not counting the winning article) of very good quality.
  • Best individual effort: Équipe France-Afrique avec Sg7438 and his beautiful Makobo Modjadji
  • Best illustration for an article: Equipe Mboa with Geiger, Leuwec and Charlotte Pelagie, for being the only team providing an original picture to illustrate Kah Walla
  • Best effort at cooperation: Benoît Prieur, for his improvements to many of his competitors articles!

And finally ...
Best translation effort: team Armenia with User:Armineaghayan, User:El-ßäbrega, User:Garik.Khachatryan and User:Armin Karapetyan, for the 41 articles translated in Armenian language

We would like to thank every single person who took part, who wanted to take part (and couldn't) and who helped, but were not part of a team. You are all amazing! Anthere and Isla Haddow (talk) 09:18, 16 February 2016 (UTC)

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