Wikipedia:Village pump (miscellaneous)/Archive 34

I keep getting good advice here, so I'm back again. I am trying to find out if there is an archive of articles placed in the current events category. Ideally, I would like to get a flatfile with articles placed in current events and removed from current events over some timeframe (say the last 30 days or last 100 days). Does anyone know if such a list is maintained anywhere? I can find articles currently listed as "current event" on the category page or through the portal, but I can't find any lists of prior current events pages. Thanks all. Wikipositivist (talk) 17:50, 3 August 2011 (UTC)

Well, adding and removing page from a category is done at the page, not at the category, so I don't expect to find a central source that you could just check whenever you felt like it. I think you'd have to get someone to look at the old database dumps to make a one-time list for you (probably someone with a Toolserver account). WhatamIdoing (talk) 23:19, 3 August 2011 (UTC)

Could I please get a bunch of people to please click through to this image on Commons and tell me if they can see it? It's File:Article title versus first sentence.jpg, which is a screenshot from the English Wikipedia. I've got a note from a user (running IE8 on Win7) who says that the image won't load for him. We're trying to figure out if it's just his computer, or maybe the browser he's running, or what. WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:41, 1 August 2011 (UTC)

I see it just fine on Google Chrome and Firefox. --Maggie Dennis (WMF) (talk) 21:02, 1 August 2011 (UTC)

Opera 11.5 on Windows 7 is also working. mabdul 21:11, 1 August 2011 (UTC)

I'm also running IE8 on Windows 7, and I'm not seeing the image, either on the WP description page or the Commons one. Deor (talk) 22:12, 1 August 2011 (UTC)

It does not load for me. Instead, the box with the red "X" appears. I am using Internet Explorer 8 on Windows Vista Home Premium 32-bit. Perhaps this is an I. E. 8 problem? [|Retro00064|☎talk|✍contribs|] 02:13, 2 August 2011 (UTC)

There is something incompatible between this jpg image and IE8. I'm not a jpg expert and cannot say what it is. I guess it came with the creation of the image and is not MediaWiki related. I cannot see the image in IE8 but using IE8 I can save it to disk where it can be viewed by other programs including Windows Photo Gallery which comes with Windows Vista. IE8 cannot view the version saved to disk. PrimeHunter (talk) 02:15, 2 August 2011 (UTC)

On the Mac side, the image itself is okay, but the thumbnails are not, in Safari 5.1 on Snow Leopard (OS 10.6)—but everything is fine on Safari 5.1 on Leopard (OS 10.7) and Firefox (3.6 on OS 10.4 or 10.5, and 5.0 on OS 10.7).

The file is a CMYK jpeg file, and that appears to be the problem: Mr Google says that Microsoft dropped support for the file format with IE8. I wonder how many of Commons' 10.6 million files have that unfortunate combination. WhatamIdoing (talk) 04:32, 2 August 2011 (UTC)

Well, I downloaded it to my hard drive, opened it with IrfanView (it opened just fine), saved a new copy of it at 100% JPEG quality, uploaded the copy, and I can now view the large version of the file at Commons. The thumbnail in the version history was not working for the new version, but maybe that will correct itself soon. I agree that there could be many more files like this on Commons or elsewhere; why Microsoft just stopped supporting this type of JPEG image is beyond me, though I have not had many problems like this at all (maybe CMYK is an obsolete JPEG format). [|Retro00064|☎talk|✍contribs|] 15:04, 2 August 2011 (UTC)

CMYK is not an "obsolete format", it is a color space used for printing and proofing. sRGB is the standard colorspace for JPG images. While there may be other images on Commons that use the incorrect color space, I doubt that it is an endemic problem. – ukexpat (talk) 15:57, 2 August 2011 (UTC)

JPG format shouldn't be used for print, period. It's a lossy compression format. It would be like compressing precise mathematical data by removing every second number, the result is largely unusable. CMYK is very much a useful colour profile, but CMYK+JPG is a bizarre combination that shouldn't really be used. TechnoSymbiosis (talk) 00:15, 3 August 2011 (UTC)

As you have Win 7 you can easily update to IE9. I can see the image on IE9. And as to the printing of JPG format pictures, of course they can be used for printing. Wouldn't be a good idea if they couldn't because most digital cams make jpg images by default. --Krawunsel (talk) 08:55, 5 August 2011 (UTC)

I have Win7 x64 and was able to open the image just fine in both IE8 x32 and x64. See screenshot. Regards SoWhy 09:06, 5 August 2011 (UTC)

http://sco.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Page

I don't get it? Is that a language? Tofutwitch11 ^(TALK) 22:15, 3 August 2011 (UTC)

Yes, that is Wikipedia in Lowland Scots. --Yair rand (talk) 22:18, 3 August 2011 (UTC)

You are not the first to wonder. See for example Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Miscellaneous/2011 April 7#sco.wikipedia.org and Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2011 May 11#Is the Scots Language Wikipedia tounge in cheek? PrimeHunter (talk) 22:43, 3 August 2011 (UTC)

At the risk of being insensitive to the present descendants of some of my ancestors, it's one of the more hilarious Wikipediae to read out loud. I would say it's basically English in a very heavy, Mike Myers-playing-a-Scotsman accent, but there are grammatical and lexical differences beyond that. Just not many, and you can find your way around them most of the time. --Golbez (talk) 13:20, 4 August 2011 (UTC)

I just enjoyed reading sco:Talk:Main Page#OUTRAGED and other sections on that talk page. Killiondude (talk) 06:51, 5 August 2011 (UTC)

Ach, weel. Ye juist hae tae keep a sense o humour whan dealin wi OUTRAGED an his ilk. Some fowk loe tae bawl. -- Derek Ross | Talk 00:36, 6 August 2011 (UTC)

For those who can't read the above statement, Google Translate says it's something about hating Englishmen and people who spell whisky with an E. John Slocum (talk) 09:03, 6 August 2011 (UTC)

What? Did I not mention what great lovers Scotsmen are? Och, I'm always forgetting that bit! -- Derek Ross | Talk 16:46, 6 August 2011 (UTC)

As the article explains, speakers of Scots are just as confused as you, hence the campaign leading up to the census, but it's safe to say the differences become less pronounced in writing. See http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a0rgETg2Hoo and http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JpVD5-IKAIo. John Slocum (talk) 23:15, 5 August 2011 (UTC)

As someone has mentioned on Talk:Isle of Wight, there is a bit of vandalism showing on the article, but when you go to edit and remove it, it doesn't show up? The last edit to the article was by me, to remove the vandalism. However, when you read the article it is still there. But has mentioned above it's not showing up in the edit box. Presumably the text is not there, as I removed it and it doesn't show up in the edit box - but why is it still showing on the article? I've tried refreshing my cache and everything but to no available. Any ideas, it's very odd...? The offending line is "From early 2009 onwards the Island was also known as Digby Island due to its new ruler Sir Digby. Although Sir Digby himself was not a blood relation to Lord Mountbatten, he has ran the island well for the past 2 years and many locals hope that long may his reign continue ". Arriva436/talk/contribs 15:30, 4 August 2011 (UTC)

Doesn't seem to be showing up for me now. The Blade of the Northern Lights (話して下さい) 15:39, 4 August 2011 (UTC)

Yep, same here now, all OK again. Very odd, as it was definitely like it for at least 10 or so minutes while I was checking. Thanks for the help. Arriva436/talk/contribs 20:34, 4 August 2011 (UTC)

When I first went over there, I saw what you were talking about; I made a null edit and it was gone. My null edit isn't in the history, so I'm assuming it was a coincidence of some sort. Ah well, all's well that ends well. The Blade of the Northern Lights (話して下さい) 20:48, 4 August 2011 (UTC)

According to Special:ListGroupRights, no user groups have the moodbar-view user right, which means that the data collected by MoodBar isn't available to any Wikipedia users. Anyone know why this is? --Yair rand (talk) 22:24, 4 August 2011 (UTC)

See this announcement at VPT. The feature is only tested for now and the data is collected by the WMF and then released anonymously. Thus this user right is not required at the moment (it might be if the feature is added permanently). Regards SoWhy 09:15, 5 August 2011 (UTC)

I actually have some of that data and would dearly love to make good use of it. :) (See discussion, such as it is.) In a nutshell, I have a list of users who have expressed problems or frustrations and would like to try to figure out some way that we can respond to them as an editing community--perhaps through creating a table that includes their usernames and, if specific, their problems, so we can basically visit help upon them. Alas, response is pretty low at this point. If anybody has any good ideas how to get this information out there where we can help them, that would be awesome. --Maggie Dennis (WMF) (talk) 17:41, 5 August 2011 (UTC)

It is my desire to build a dashboard with a running stream and graph set and such not that allows for any user to view what the overall "mood" is at any moment and respond to issues as they come up. But at this point in time, we don't have the resources to build a fully functional feature right out of the gate. We need to make sure that the feature has some value before we move into second phase.--Jorm (WMF) (talk) 22:41, 5 August 2011 (UTC)

On the Frank Morris page - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frank_Morris_%28prisoner%29 the birth place is identified as New York City. On the June 1962 Alcatraz escape page http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/June_1962_Alcatraz_escape the birth place is identified as Washington D.C.

I do not know the correct birth place location but thought I should point out the inconsistency — Preceding unsigned comment added by 98.247.16.79 (talk) 03:40, 5 August 2011 (UTC)

Resolved, I hope. -- John of Reading (talk) 09:46, 6 August 2011 (UTC)

The file commons:File:Backyards, Greenwich Village, 1914.tif, which is used on a very large number of pages (links), has been deleted on Wikimedia Commons for the following reason: Per commons:Commons:Deletion requests/File:Backyards, Greenwich Village, 1914.tif. Rather than notify a large number of talk pages I am raising this on WP:AN and WP:VP to obtain the right intervention.

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On a WikiProject newsletter, so not so much of a problem. Grandiose (me, talk, contribs) 15:31, 5 August 2011 (UTC)

Will an off-topic but friendly message from another Wikipedian increase your motivation to work or do you just ignore it? Will a negative but constructive criticism harm your motivation? If so, how can we phrase the criticism so as to minimize the negative impact?

We (Robert E. Kraut, Haiyi Zhu, Aniket Kittur, Jenny He, Amy Zhang) are researchers from Carnegie Mellon University. We are planning to conduct experiments to investigate the effects of feedback on participation in Wikipedia. Specifically, we would like to post different kinds of responses to creators of newly-created articles and examine their activities after receiving the messages.

For more details of the study, please come to project description. Please leave your comments, suggestions and concerns. We really appreciate your help!

Have a good day! Haiyizhu (talk) 17:05, 5 August 2011 (UTC)

Newly-created articles are often done by new users, so what the established users who answer questions here would do may not be the same. In any event human nature is varied, one person may thank you for constructive criticism, another may take it as an attack on them personally and get angry. Some people will get mad no matter how polite and helpful you are with them. FYI: we already have numerous template messages we user here to notify users of problems with new articles or other issues, you can see them at Wikipedia:Template messages/User talk namespace. Beeblebrox (talk) 22:42, 5 August 2011 (UTC)

Hey all.

I'm the current (interim) editor-in-chief of the The Signpost, a community newspaper with a distinctly professional feel. (If you've not heard of us, visit the link: we've been going for seven years now, and we've had surprisingly few complaints.)

Something I'd really like to see is the (re)introduction of some hard-hitting opinion pieces. As long as you can write in an understandable format, we'd love to hear from you.

Secondly, if you have strong ties to another wiki - particularly one in a foreign language - we'd also really like to hear from you.

Thirdly, we are always in need of new contributors, so if journalism appeals do get in touch.

You can contact me via email, or use WT:SIGNPOST if you don't mind your early thoughts being public. Regards, - Jarry1250 ^{[Weasel? Discuss.]} 15:42, 6 August 2011 (UTC)

I'm writing a blog post about what makes a good local article (or set of articles) on Wikipedia - in other words articles about a specific place, such as a town or village, and its features, people, etc.

What do you think we currently do well, or badly, in that regard. What do you, or would you, like to see, in such articles? What are the best examples?

Please feel free to prior discussion, if you know of any. Cheers, Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Andy's talk; Andy's edits 10:24, 8 August 2011 (UTC)

I've been writing articles about my local area recently - it is fun, but sourcing can sometimes be tricky! And coverage is patchy. Article ideas include:

• Buildings - especially churches (St Denys' Church, Sleaford)
• Monuments
• Local people/families (I find the latter articles more interesting - The Handley family of Sleaford)

The topic is interesting because it is the sort of material best contributed locally - as most of the source material is going to be books in the local library. The biggest problem I have come across is patchy coverage and source reliability. When I was writing about St Denys' the vast majority of material dates from before 1870, there is no reliably published history between then and the modern day. Even then the main source is a book that is known for being very well sourced... but full of problematic (Victorian) interpretation. So I had to take care using it :) There were other sources, largely architectural reference works which are not easily obtained (the books themselves cost in the regions of hundreds and none of the local libraries stock them!).

When I was writing about the Handley family I have had to rely predominantly on one source - with material backed up in dribs and drabs from several other sources. Writing about just-notable families from so long ago is hard because while there is plenty of primary source material (parish records etc.) very little effort exists to collate that data into a secondary source that can be used. I hit the jackpot on the Handleys because one of their descendants had published material about the family - but the even more notable Carre family in my town does not have any broad coverage.

A lot of the books and material your going to see used as sources in these articles are, naturally, local - and this presents trouble in judging reliability. Clearly a published book has some degree of reliability - but some local historical publishers will happily publish your work without much fuss, and the print runs can be small. I tracked down what appeared to be a decent source regarding a local building and it turned out to be little more than a pamphlet, printed about 250 times and with a list of subscribers :)

Writing about actual villages can become even more problematic. Decent sourcing tends to exist for towns, but villages mostly have no published history. The places are notable, and have an article most of the time, but piecing together source material to expand them beyond "It exists, it is located here, it has a church and X inhabitants" becomes tricky. --Errant ^(chat!) 10:53, 8 August 2011 (UTC)

I've nominated myself for BAG membership; comments, questions, and !votes are welcome at Wikipedia:Bot Approvals Group/nominations/Hersfold. Thanks. :-) Hersfold ^(t/a/c) 18:35, 8 August 2011 (UTC)

The file commons:File:Nokia wordmark.svg, which is used on a very large number of pages (links), has been marked for nominated deletion on Wikimedia Commons for the following reason: Deletion requests August 2011. Rather than notify a large number of talk pages I am raising this on WP:AN and WP:VP to obtain the right intervention.

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This notification is provided by a Bot --CommonsNotificationBot (talk) 18:19, 7 August 2011 (UTC)

I have removed the image from the {{Nokia phones}} navbox so we can more easily check where else it is being used. -- John of Reading (talk) 18:42, 7 August 2011 (UTC)

...leaving just the Nokia article itself and a userbox, {{User Wikipedia financing ads}}. -- John of Reading (talk) 19:10, 7 August 2011 (UTC)

This was done by an IP user and is unlikely to succeed. The plain text nature of the logo is clearly evident. – Adrignola talk 15:00, 8 August 2011 (UTC)

• It's in no danger. Sven Manguard Wha? 02:36, 10 August 2011 (UTC)

Hello there

Could somebody proof read my contributions on Saint-Nazaire? I am sure that my corrections are right, but I'm not sure that they are understandable, as english is not my first langage. Sorry if it's not the right place

Pleclown (talk) 17:30, 8 August 2011 (UTC)

One minor spelling correction (of->off), but otherwise looks just fine. The Blade of the Northern Lights (話して下さい) 04:12, 10 August 2011 (UTC)

Hi Village pumpers,

I assume more people can read me down there. It seems Wikinews is boiling.

Can you help it ?

Yours,

Ultrogothe (talk) 20:04, 8 August 2011 (UTC)

• Wikinews and Wikipedia are two separate projects. Our admins are not necessarily their admins. Seek out the appropriate noticeboards on that project if you need assistance. Sven Manguard Wha? 02:21, 10 August 2011 (UTC)

The file commons:File:GreenEggs.png, which is used on a very large number of pages (links), has been marked for nominated deletion on Wikimedia Commons for the following reason: Media without a source as of 9 August 2011. Rather than notify a large number of talk pages I am raising this on WP:AN and WP:VP to obtain the right intervention.

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The file commons:File:Ataturk-full.jpg, which is used on a very large number of pages (links), has been marked for nominated deletion on Wikimedia Commons for the following reason: Deletion requests August 2011. Rather than notify a large number of talk pages I am raising this on WP:AN and WP:VP to obtain the right intervention.

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Replace with File:Ataturk_dam_1-GAP.jpg or File:Ataturk_dam_2-GAP.jpg -- とある白い猫 ^chi? 02:18, 10 August 2011 (UTC)

Ohnoz! I just looked at Special:Statistics and saw that there are exactly 666 bots. Please, can someone please create a new bot or deflag a current bot ASAP. We cannot continue to feed the myth!!! --64.85.216.157 (talk) 05:01, 9 August 2011 (UTC)

<rolls eyes> Don't worry, there are a few bots pending approval right now. Sven Manguard Wha? 02:14, 10 August 2011 (UTC)

Was the 666th named BeastBot? The Blade of the Northern Lights (話して下さい) 22:45, 10 August 2011 (UTC)

I take partial responsibility for this. –xeno^talk 23:01, 10 August 2011 (UTC)

Looks like we survived the end times; the number of bots is now up to 668. :-) RJH (talk)

Wikipedia's articles have a new format and I don't know how to edit them any more. Georgia guy (talk) 20:51, 10 August 2011 (UTC)

I saw the same thing - everything looked like the mobile version. It went away after a couple minutes for me. —Akrabbim^talk 20:55, 10 August 2011 (UTC)

It was discussed elsewhere. A coding glitch which persisted for 8 minutes. --Tagishsimon (talk) 23:44, 10 August 2011 (UTC)

Would a list in someone's userspace titled "Editors who wouldn't have to worry if I went postal" be unacceptable, just in poor taste, or otherwise acceptable? Ian.thomson (talk) 23:28, 10 August 2011 (UTC)

Arguably in poor taste, and borderline unacceptable. Ironholds (talk) 23:42, 10 August 2011 (UTC)

(ec) Clearly poor taste; nothing more. It's an odd way of signifying approbation. --Tagishsimon (talk) 23:44, 10 August 2011 (UTC)

Tasteless, yes, not quite in the spirit of WP:CIVIL and perhaps a little disturbing. It almost seems like a subconscious call for help. Ah well. Regards, RJH (talk) 16:27, 11 August 2011 (UTC)

It depends. Am I on the list? If not, then that is a clear threat of violence to me, and I won't stand for it. :P — Bility (talk) 17:00, 11 August 2011 (UTC)

The file commons:File:No Karl Marx.JPG, which is used on a very large number of pages (links), has been marked for nominated deletion on Wikimedia Commons for the following reason: Deletion requests August 2011. Rather than notify a large number of talk pages I am raising this on WP:AN and WP:VP to obtain the right intervention.

What to do

A discussion about whether to delete the file will now take place on Commons. If you feel the deletion can be contested then please do so (commons:COM:SPEEDY has further information). Otherwise:

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This notification is provided by a Bot --CommonsNotificationBot (talk) 18:04, 11 August 2011 (UTC)

currently the code in my signature page (User:Someone35/common.css) is #bodyContent a[title="User:Someone35"] { background-color: #75ab00; color: #f2ffd5; } but when i try to add a border to it my signature resets for some reason and it shows a normal signature, i tried to add the border's code in many places in the signature but it still didn't work (including trying to remove "#bodyContent a"), can someone please help me solve it? --Someone35 (talk) 12:14, 3 August 2011 (UTC)

There are examples at User:Athaenara/Gallery which you could adapt. -- John of Reading (talk) 12:27, 3 August 2011 (UTC)

You were trying to use wiki markup and HTML elements, which don't do anything in your CSS. You can add a border like this:

#bodyContent a[title="User:Someone35"] { background-color: #75ab00; color: #f2ffd5; border:1px solid black; }

— Bility (talk) 16:22, 3 August 2011 (UTC)

thanks!!! but how do i change the color of the border to "1e4a00" or change the font?--Someone35 (talk) 06:54, 4 August 2011 (UTC)

Try something like...

#bodyContent a[title="User:Someone35"] { background-color: #75ab00; color: #f2ffd5; border:1px solid black; border-color: #1e4a00; font-family:Segoe Print; }

...though I had to replace "1px" with something larger to confirm that the border was coloured. -- John of Reading (talk) 08:49, 4 August 2011 (UTC)

thank you very much, by the way cool font :)--Someone35 (talk) 12:17, 4 August 2011 (UTC)

my signature looks big now, how can i make it smaller? >small> marks and font-size:X don't work--Someone35 (talk) 12:23, 4 August 2011 (UTC)

After looking at the examples in Help:User style, I tried adding "font-size: 50%", and that does shrink the text. -- John of Reading (talk) 16:35, 4 August 2011 (UTC)

thanks, it does work, how do i change the width of the border in the sides or the bottom of the signature? or a customized link to the talk page?--Someone35 (talk) 16:51, 4 August 2011 (UTC)

Ah. If you are looking for a "customized link to your talk page", you may have misunderstood the effect of these edits to your common.css file. The edits there only affect what you see. Everyone else still sees a standard Wikipedia signature like mine. Have another look at WP:CUSTOMSIG, perhaps. (I don't know enough CSS to answer your question about having different border widths on different sides). -- John of Reading (talk) 17:25, 4 August 2011 (UTC)

Yeah... currently only you can see your custom sig. The rest of us see a normal bluelink. When changing your signature, you go to Special:Preferences ('My preferences', upper right corner of this page) not your CSS page. Look under the the 'User profile' tab in the section 'Signature'.-- Obsidi♠n Soul 18:23, 4 August 2011 (UTC)

then how do i see your customized link, obsidian? did you just copy and paste the code from your css page to the white line in the preferences page or that a different coding? --Someone35 (talk) 19:34, 4 August 2011 (UTC)

When you edit this page you can see the actual code of my signature.

 '''<span style="font-family:century gothic">[[User:Obsidian Soul|<span style="color:#000">Obsidi<span style="color:#c5c9d2">♠</span>n</span>]] [[User talk:Obsidian Soul|<span style="color:#c5c9d2">Soul</span>]]</span>'''

It's a combination of html and wikimarkup (the exact same codes that would work if I was simply editing any normal wikipedia page). I simply added that to the field in the signature section of my preferences and ticked the "Treat the above as wiki markup" box. No need to touch any CSS pages at all. View the source of the page John of Reading suggested earlier: User:Athaenara/Gallery. You will be able to see examples of code of different signatures that will work in the signature field, including those with borders/boxes. You can adapt them to your username. And please do read the instructions in WP:CUSTOMSIG.-- Obsidi♠n Soul 20:04, 4 August 2011 (UTC)

Just add your code to MediaWiki:Common.css and we will all be able to see it. — Bility (talk) 19:40, 4 August 2011 (UTC)

1. that page is locked and i can't edit it, also it doesn't look like other people put their codes there. 2. is there a way i can translate my current css signature to html?--Someone35 (talk) 07:17, 5 August 2011 (UTC)

I don't think Bility (talk · contribs) was making a serious suggestion. Try this:

<span style="background-color: #75ab00; border:1.5px solid #872900; font-family:Segoe Print; font-size:80%;"> [[User:Someone35|<font color="#f2ffd5">Someone35</font>]] [[User talk:Someone35|<font color="#f2ffd5">(talk)</font>]] </span>

...which displays as  Someone35 (talk)  -- John of Reading (talk) 07:38, 5 August 2011 (UTC)

thanks!!! (you can now see the signature, right?) -- Someone35 (talk) 14:25, 5 August 2011 (UTC)

I know this is a little dated, but to reply to your question, other people can now see that custom signature. - Bkid ^{My talk}/_Contribs 08:01, 12 August 2011 (UTC)

After someone discussed this on the Dutch Wikipedia VP I did a search for "is expected in >year<" (where >year< is a year before this year) on English wiki and I found many articles proclaiming expectations for years past. I fixed the few articles proclaiming "is expected in 2006" and "is expected in 2007" but from 2008 onwards it is too much for me to correct manually. Clearly some articles haven't been updated for a long time. Likewise "are expected in >year<" which I updated until 2008. Other searches may also find dated articles. S_peakF_ree ^(talk) 16:44, 11 August 2011 (UTC)

And how accurate are we in our predictions? — Bility (talk) 17:01, 11 August 2011 (UTC)

I didn't research the claims, I merely removed the sentences expressing the expectations or when they contained useful information I often changed "is" into "was". S_peakF_ree ^(talk) 17:07, 11 August 2011 (UTC)

There's a comparable problem with the use of "currently there", "currently a" and "recently", which also fail WP:DATED. Regards, RJH (talk) 18:38, 12 August 2011 (UTC)

Today's featured article (and the article to which it refers) both start "North Island is the northernmost island in the Houtman Abrolhos".

That grated when I read it. I would be more than happy if it read "The northernmost island in the Houtman Abrolhos is North Island", however there is more than one "North Island", so if folk were talking about North Island, Seychelles, then this article would be wrong. It's a contextual thing.

This may be a bit pernickety, but I feel it would improve articles like this.

Any comments? -- SGBailey (talk) 10:25, 12 August 2011 (UTC)

North Island most commonly refers to the upper half of New Zealand; the lower half is, astonishingly, South Island. I'm not really sure why your version would be better since it's basically just rearranged. There are probably hundreds of islands, towns, lakes, etc. with duplicate names and I thinks it's reasonable to expect readers to be able to figure out which one is meant from context, especially since the area is given as part of article name. Not making this assumption would make articles cumbersome and overly pedantic; Ray Charles would never have had a hit with "Georgia (U.S. State) On My Mind".--RDBury (talk) 11:20, 12 August 2011 (UTC)

I think the link "Mobile view", which is currently placed at the bottom of every page, should be put at the top instead. Isn't it too difficult for mobile users to find or even notice this link when the original version of the page is viewed in a small screen of a mobile phone. It would be more user-friendly to have it at the top. Please consider it from the perspective of a mobile phone user. --Quest for Truth (talk) 17:42, 12 August 2011 (UTC)

Hi. Now is your opportunity to voice your opinion! See mw:Mobile site rewrite and mw:Mobile site rewrite/Testing. The testing mobile version is located at [1]. Killiondude (talk) 17:49, 12 August 2011 (UTC)

I just gave my opinion there. Cheers! --Quest for Truth (talk) 20:41, 12 August 2011 (UTC)

If anyone wants an easy DYK, have a look at the stub I've just created for Gabriel Prokofiev. Lots of refs available, great hook potential.  —SMALLJIM  22:32, 13 August 2011 (UTC)

After someone said this might be useful, I made it happen. So you can now read and search all post-October 2004 archives of the village pump much more easily :) Happy editing, - Jarry1250 ^{[Weasel? Discuss.]} 15:15, 14 August 2011 (UTC)

How is integrity maintained on any given subject if anyone can make any change at any time? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Cotati123 (talk • contribs) 23:37, 14 August 2011 (UTC)

We have an arsenal of tools to detect vandalism and edits from new contributors. I even spotted this edit from [2]. Marcus Qwertyus 23:41, 14 August 2011 (UTC)

I've noticed that many Biblical names, particularly those from the Old Testament -- Hagar, Sarah, Jacob, Isaac, etc. -- receive WP:PRIMARYTOPIC status almost by default. If it's Biblical, it's considered More Important (tm) than any other use. Yet figures from other mythologies -- like Helen of Troy -- have recently been moved away from primary topic status. I fear that this shows an inherent bias toward Judeo-Christian figures. Am I off-base here? Powers ^T 21:09, 4 August 2011 (UTC)

I don't know that it represents anything insidious. If it is bothersome, why not try to start a WP:RM discussion on the talk pages. If consensus exists, then the article can be moved... --Jayron32 21:15, 4 August 2011 (UTC)

I smell a conspiracy. Killiondude (talk) 21:23, 4 August 2011 (UTC)

I doubt that RM would be successful, unless some other page were shown to be more popular. Jacob, for example, gets almost 2,000 page views a day. The dab page only gets 50. Even if we assume that every single one of them started off at Jacob, that suggests that 97.5% readers are ending up in the right place on the first try. (As for Helen of Troy, since nearly everyone looking for Helen is looking for Helen of Troy, so I'd have redirected that page to Helen of Troy, but used the full title for the article. Also—I see nothing in that RM discussion that suggests that the dab page needed to be moved to Helen rather than left at [[Helen (disambiguation). In fact, it looks like what happened was actually opposed by most of the editors there.) If there is bias, it is only the bias of the English-speaking world, which we expects educated people to recognize major cultural figures, whether they come from the Bible or Greek myths. WhatamIdoing (talk) 21:37, 4 August 2011 (UTC)

Cf. Jason. bd2412 T 21:51, 4 August 2011 (UTC)

But that's just it. Noah and Moses might be considered cultural figures in the English-speaking world, but Sarah and Hagar? They're relatively obscure Biblical figures important only to the Abrahamic religions. It just seems as if the conversation is dominated by Christians who know of these figures from Sunday school and just assume they're important to everyone. Powers ^T 22:52, 4 August 2011 (UTC)

I would agree it seems odd that Hagar, Sarah, Jacob and Isaac has biblical figures as automatic primary topics as compared to the page move regarding Helen of Troy, especially considering they all have some very prominent alternative uses. However that question should be determined with a page move proposal on each individual page. It is hardly a sign of deliberate bias, just a sign of "Nobody thought of it before". It happens quite a lot here (probably more often than you think). --Saddhiyama (talk) 23:06, 4 August 2011 (UTC)

In Talk:Hagar#Requested move 2011, the article was moved from Hagar (biblical person). I seem to recall other figures who have similarly already had move discussions, though I can't find them now. Adam (Bible) was moved to Adam without discussion in December 2008. Powers ^T 00:07, 5 August 2011 (UTC)

Sarah, Jacob and Isaac don't seem at all out of place to me. It's not just a question of how important the subject is; it's a question of how important it is compared to other uses, and these are the most important figures with (just) these names.

If you look at the options at Hagar (disambiguation), most of them get less than 10% the views per day compared to Hagar. The only one that gets than 10% is Sammy Hagar, which actually gets about six times as many—and which therefore I'd personally have chosen as the main topic. I suspect, though, that the editors in the discussion preferred what WP:PRECISION at the Article titles policy calls the "natural mode of disambiguation in standard English": by putting the article about the biblical figure at Hagar, none of the articles needed to use clunky parenthetical disambiguators. This choice is not uncommon, even for articles that aren't about people, and it is not an unreasonable interpretation of the policy. WhatamIdoing (talk) 00:57, 5 August 2011 (UTC)

First, it's not fair to compare uses in a pairwise manner when considering primary topic. The issue is not "is there another use that is more likely", but rather "is this use much more likely than all other uses combined". Given the number of items on the Hagar (disambiguation) page, it requires some very strong evidence in favor of the proposed primary topic, which was not provided. Second of all, WP:PRECISION does not and should not override WP:PRIMARYTOPIC; if, let's say, 55% of our readers are looking for some use other than the Biblical figure, why make more than half of our readers click first to Hagar, and then to Hagar (disambiguation) and only then to the article they wanted to read in the first place? Why not cut out one of those levels of indirection for most of our readers instead of favoring Judeo-Christian figures because it's convenient? Powers ^T 12:16, 5 August 2011 (UTC)

As I thought, there is no response to this. Instead, editors just continue to assert that if it's in the Bible, it has to be primary. Powers ^T 13:03, 14 August 2011 (UTC)

There was only no response because I missed yours.

I have already given you one reason why one might choose one name over another: because such an arrangement may permit you to avoid clunky parenthetical disambiguators. Also, keeping the dab pages off the main name means that some of our readers will reach the page they want, no matter what page that is. Putting the dab list at the main page means that zero readers end up at their target article on first click/first search. You will doubtless agree with me that "some" is more than "zero". WhatamIdoing (talk) 00:26, 17 August 2011 (UTC)

Talk:Adam#Requested move 2011 - yet another example of editors blithely asserting that the mythological figure is automatically primary. Powers ^T 14:25, 8 August 2011 (UTC)

Once in a while, when I come to Wikipedia, I will get a website open at surveysite.com (or something like that). Is this a website endorsed by Wikipedia or has my computer been hijacked? NorthernThunder (talk) 01:39, 16 August 2011 (UTC)

The latter, I think. --Tagishsimon (talk) 01:42, 16 August 2011 (UTC)

I guess you have experienced typosquatting after mistyping Wikipedia's address or following a misspelled link. You can check your browser history to see if you have visited a url close to wikipedia.org, for example the typosquatter at wikipidia.org. PrimeHunter (talk) 02:12, 16 August 2011 (UTC)

Is there a template similar to {{merge}} that may be used to propose separating a section to an own article? HeyMid (contribs) 21:50, 16 August 2011 (UTC)

"Template:Split section" perhaps. Or maybe "Template:Split sections". Grandiose (me, talk, contribs) 22:01, 16 August 2011 (UTC)

{{split|new article|discuss=Talk:article#section}} at the top of the article, with link to the relevant discussion from the current article's talk page → basically it should mirror the procedures for WP:MERGE. –MuZemike 22:26, 16 August 2011 (UTC)

This has to be relevant to editing/admining here... http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/21/magazine/do-you-suffer-from-decision-fatigue.html --SarekOfVulcan (talk) 19:48, 17 August 2011 (UTC)

That is an absolutely fascinating article.-Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 02:02, 18 August 2011 (UTC)

I just felt like checking out the admins intervention for vandalism page, but then I noticed that the "alerts" section was empty. What I mean is that the page stated that " To file a report, edit this page and follow the instructions at the top of the "User-reported" section. ". Since there were no text in the "user reported" section in the alerts area, I don't think any new people will know how to report. Then again, I might be wrong somehow.

By the way, I am kind of lost in wikipedias help areas, so tell me if I am in the wrong place, Thanks! Thekillerpenguin (talk) 02:32, 18 August 2011 (UTC)

If you actually go to edit that section the instructions will be in the edit window, along with example reports. Beeblebrox (talk) 02:43, 18 August 2011 (UTC)

Sounds like an interesting program... I don't know all the details yet, but I like the idea of getting university students to practise interactive research and writing.

I found out about the project the hard way, alas... and probably messed up a student's project (hopefully not). I translated the French Wikipedia article on the condition of women in Tunisia. There was no link to an English article. After finishing the translation in WP:WIZ (sort of a long article, not a stub), I clicked on "Move" and discovered there was indeed an article already on the English Wikipedia called "Women in Tunisia"... I took a look at it, saw that it didn't contain any of the info that I had just translated, so I just started editing and added the translated details.

After I finished that, I clicked on the Discussion tab to sign it, and mention that I'd added the translation of the French Wikipedia article. Then I discovered a bunch of info there on the Ambassador program for Georgetown University. And I couldn't add anything to the Discussion tab. Although, I wasn't locked from editing the main article?

Hope that won't be a problem ... yeeks. So what exactly are we supposed to do about articles that are involved with the Ambassador program? Are only the students supposed to be adding to those articles until they finish their Ambassador project? Should I remove the info I added? What??

OttawaAC (talk) 02:19, 18 August 2011 (UTC)

This is a weird situation. No one can really complain that you improved a subject; "how dare you improve an article with well written, reliably-sourced-through-inline-citations material!"—it's a perversion of all we're about. And of course your efforts were made in good faith. At the same time, it does look like you've compromised one student's assignment plan and, at least as to that student, something will need to be worked out. But I can't imagine the right thing to do ever being to remove the good content you added. The bell is rung on that. What I suggest is that you drop a note at User talk:Alin (Public Policy) - the Campus Team Coordinator at the Wikimedia Foundation, possibly linking to this thread and explaining the situation, and maybe duplicate on Wikipedia talk:WikiProject United States Public Policy/Courses/Spring 2011/Women and Human Rights (Robin Kelley). By the way, I'm not sure why you had trouble editing the talk page but it's unprotected and there is nothing I can see that would prevent it.--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 02:44, 18 August 2011 (UTC)

Thank you for the links. It wouldn't be a problem to remove what I added -- I just copied and pasted entire paragraphs of the translation. Maybe it will make no difference. Learning experience for everyone? lol OttawaAC (talk) 04:47, 18 August 2011 (UTC)

I am a Regional Ambassador in the Global Education Program and I assure you, you are more than welcome to edit and improve articles currently being written by students in the program. In fact, not enough students are getting to enjoy the experience of collaborative work. Moreover, the article you edited, Women in Tunisia, was created as part of the Spring 2011 term; that student had already finisehd their class and moved on before you touched the article. Dcoetzee 14:48, 19 August 2011 (UTC)

The file commons:File:GreenEggs.png, which is used on a very large number of pages (links), has been deleted on Wikimedia Commons for the following reason: No source since 9 August 2011. Rather than notify a large number of talk pages I am raising this on WP:AN and WP:VP to obtain the right intervention.

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So I run a small company in Union, NJ that does early stage investing. The crux of my business is unimportant, what is important is it's really, really highly regulated. Someone on the web brought this site (an external wiki) to my attention. It is full of completely misleading and outdated information. It says it's from Wikipedia, but when I searched here nothing came up. Is there anything I can do to try and get this page taken down from wherever it is, or at the very least updated with something vaguely akin to facts? JasonNichols (talk) 02:49, 20 August 2011 (UTC)

By the looks of it, this once was a wikipedia article, but was deleted on 27 December 2010 - see http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Scrier_Funds,_LLLP&action=edit&redlink=1

Sadly, we have no control over the site which still carries the article leaving you with two options: 1. Hope that they take a more recent copy of our data or 2. Make contact with them and ask them to remove the page. --Tagishsimon (talk) 03:02, 20 August 2011 (UTC)

Frankly, you shouldn't be using Wikipedia itself to make business decisions, never mind a website that at best is an out-of-date mirror. Under our licensing terms, we can't prevent anyone reusing Wikipedia content, provided it is properly attributed, and there is no way to ensure that other sites are up-to-date (or in practical terms even copying content accurately in the first place). You could take this up with whoever runs the website, but I think you'd be better off looking for more reliable sources of information. AndyTheGrump (talk) 03:08, 20 August 2011 (UTC)

Andy, I think your first sentence rather missing the point and merely adds insult to injury :( --Tagishsimon (talk) 03:15, 20 August 2011 (UTC)

Yeah, I just set up a mediawiki for my site, and I'm playing around with it now... I was just hoping maybe there was some way to edit the article they were pointing to, or have it super-deleted (is that even a thing?) I dunno. I've always been a fan of Wikipedia, so I figured I'd ask here first. Thanks anyways, guys, I'll try contacting that site and asking them to delete it. Maybe I can get someone from jp.wikipedia.org to translate for me :) JasonNichols (talk) 04:20, 20 August 2011 (UTC)

I'd like some input on this conundrum that's been stewing for a while now. If there is a better place for this discussion, please let me know.

One of the Foundation's stated goals is to increase project participation by women. It seems to me, pursuant to that goal, we should be striving for gender equity as much as possible. But I think there are many cases where we fall short.

One big example of where we fall short is in the area of national sporting teams. Currently, usage is all over the place, depending on exactly how one person or another interpreted WP:PRIMARYTOPIC and WP:COMMONNAME at the time the decision was made. For example, United States national soccer team is a disambiguation page pointing to the men's and women's squads; United States national basketball team is a redirect to the men's squad; and Australia national basketball team is explicitly about the men's squad -- without even so much as a hatnote to the women's squad. (I tried to come up with an American example for the third case, but there don't appear to be any, except for sports without a women's national team at all.)

That's three different ways this information is organized, and I fear that makes it confusing to readers. But this is not meant to be solely an argument about consistency in article titling, which I know well is a controversial subject. It's not so much consistency which I desire here, but gender equity.

Yes, men's sports are almost universally more popular than women's sports. We are not here to change that, and should only react to reality. But is WP:PRIMARYTOPIC so inviolate? Is it so impenetrable that we must assume that someone looking for the Australia national basketball team is interested only in the men's squad? (N.B.: there is an active move discussion on that article's talk page, but it is being rejected soundly because of limited scope; it is felt that a larger discussion is necessary.)

WP:PRIMARYTOPIC is not a suicide pact. Certainly, there may be cases where the ungendered usage is nearly always meant to refer to the men's team. But it seems to me that in the vast majority of cases, the women's squad is, if not equally often, then at least sometimes meant over the men's team. Isn't that enough to ignore the letter of the rule and follow the spirit?

-- Powers ^T 13:53, 26 July 2011 (UTC)

Not addressing the problem. There are women on the Internet...they just have different interests. Try joining a weight loss board. For instance gymnastics is a more female interest sports. (Bet you did not realize "Over the past 10 years, the Ute gymnasts have averaged over 10,000 fans per home meet." [3]) And our Wikiproject gymnastics is dead, dead, dead. Yet there is a huge raging Gymternet out there of blogs, Examiner, forums, even an academic web-based sports science journal. TCO (reviews needed) 14:35, 26 July 2011 (UTC)

I wasn't suggesting this as a solution, merely using the problem already identified by the Foundation as context. Powers ^T 19:50, 26 July 2011 (UTC)

No one else has any opinions on this? Powers ^T 12:39, 28 July 2011 (UTC)

Does anyone have any idea where else I might take this concern, if not here? Powers ^T 21:06, 4 August 2011 (UTC)

What about Wikipedia talk:Disambiguation? That page does seem to have some participation. :/ --Maggie Dennis (WMF) (talk) 17:36, 5 August 2011 (UTC)

(I saw it at WT:Disambiguation, good idea.) I noticed the same problem but in situations where we didn't even employ existing WP:DISAMBIG methods with primary topics - hatnotes. Let's start with that and see how readers react. --Joy [shallot] (talk) 17:24, 6 August 2011 (UTC)

What do you mean, Joy? Can you give an example? Powers ^T

All the 'County national football team' articles I looked at didn't even a see-also link to the women's team, let alone a hatnote. Some had it linked through a navbox, sometimes through a single letter (a M/W pair). --Joy [shallot] (talk) 17:03, 10 August 2011 (UTC)

Yeah, that's blatantly unacceptable and ought to be fixed immediately. Powers ^T 21:48, 12 August 2011 (UTC)

So, as I said, start from there. Place a hatnote at the Aussie men's team article. Later, move it to include the word men's and keep the redirect as is. All this is within the realm of WP:PT. --Joy [shallot] (talk) 12:44, 14 August 2011 (UTC)

Like pulling teeth, this is. Powers ^T 14:14, 10 August 2011 (UTC)

It's difficult to form an opinion on what seems are fairly abstract proposal. I think as a first measure it would certainly be appropriate to create a hatnote on the men's national team article to the corresponding women's team. If you're proposing renaming articles, I think we'd need to see a list of the affected articles and the proposed changes. older ≠ wiser 14:31, 10 August 2011 (UTC)

The problem is that User:LauraHale already tried a renaming at Talk:Australia national basketball team#Requested move. It was rejected in large part because "This would affect all countries and require a much wider discussion." This is one such attempt at a "wider" discussion, but it seems to have failed miserably. I'm certainly open to suggestions about where such a "wider" discussion might occur, but the piecemeal approach has already been tried and failed. (I suppose I could try a move request for what must be hundreds upon hundreds of articles, but somehow I can't see that succeeding either.) Powers ^T 17:27, 10 August 2011 (UTC)

Like you say, mostly it's going to be the men's teams that are the most popular, and it depends mainly on the sport in question. I think the United States national soccer teams are an exception to the rule, with the international game being overwhelmingly a men's sport pretty much everywhere else. And of course there are examples where women's teams will be the obvious choice over men's, for example Netball. If there's a conflict in any particular example of men's/women's teams, then don't we just disambiguate in the title of the articles and add hatnotes to each? Miremare 17:27, 10 August 2011 (UTC)

But that's my concern... a person typing "Swedish national ice hockey team" into the search bar doesn't know what she's going to get: the men's team? the women's team? a disambiguation page? In the interests of gender equity, shouldn't we at least consider not assuming the men's team is meant? Powers ^T 17:30, 10 August 2011 (UTC)

We should consider of course, but only if the men's and women's articles get relatively the same amount of traffic. If a decent majority of people are expecting one article over the other, why does it make sense to have a disambiguation page? You're having a disambiguation page almost for the sake of having one - on principle - as opposed to trying to simplify the user experience. If most people expect one page, redirect to that page and use a hatnote to the disambiguation page/other page. Starwrath (talk) 22:01, 31 August 2011 (UTC)

So, what's the next step? We seem agreed there's a problem here, but I'm not sure everyone agrees on what the problem is. Should I open an RFC somewhere? Or make a proposal on VPP? Or something else? Powers ^T 21:48, 12 August 2011 (UTC)

I see that the issue is complex enough not to have a quick solution, but I support this effort. I believe that most readers might not be aware of the women's team and will appreciate a disambiguation scheme in most cases. As was pointed out, some case-by-case decisions might be appropriate, but general hightening of women's team links is a good idea and will be appreciated overall. A standard scheme where it is appropriate (such as college teams) might enable users to navigate it quickly.Jarhed (talk) 07:33, 20 August 2011 (UTC)

In our current society, I think assuming the men's article is the one the user is expecting to see if fine IF traffic statistics (and general knowledge) indicate that that is the article that people are mostly expecting. For example, the men's major golf championships article gets approximately 85% of all traffic related to "golf major championships" (there are women's and senior major articles), so redirecting the term "golf major championships" (and I would argue just "major championships") to the men's article seems logical based on the fact that that is highly likely to be what the user is expected to get. However, I think as more of a compromise solution, in cases where this exists (and it doesn't have to exist in every case, but if 85% of the traffic is going to the men's article, the generic term should probably redirect to the men's article as that is, again, highly likely what the user is searching for) make sure there is a hatnote to the women's article so that in the offchance (and I'm saying this from a statistical perspective) that they want the women's article but did not actually type women's in the search term, they can get to it with a single click (which would be the SAME number of clicks to get to it anyway if there was a disambiguation page to begin with). I think this is a decent compromise between the two opinions. I'm very against putting disambiguation pages in areas where one page has substantially more page views for the sake of being politically correct as this will just be an annoyance to users, when the whole point of redirects to begin with is to simplify the user experience. Always having a disambiguation page would go against this. I should also point out that in some cases, like England national football team there is no men's/women's in there because that is the actual name of the team, as the FA or whoever doesn't feel disambiguation is needed. If the organizations don't disambiguate, neither should we. Anyone else's thoughts? Starwrath (talk) 21:53, 31 August 2011 (UTC)

There was a page which listed phones and 3G modems together with their UMTS bands. I can't find it anymore nor I remember the exact page title. Please help!

I don't understand the data well enough to find what you are looking for, but I can get good search results using google advanced search. Here is the string I used: umts 3g modem site:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/.Jarhed (talk) 07:40, 20 August 2011 (UTC)

Gannet oilfield (A, B, C, D, E, F and G) - Eocene, Palaeocene and Jurassic - operated by Shell U.K. Limited. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 88.160.13.244 (talk) 21:36, 13 August 2011 (UTC)

What about it? WhatamIdoing (talk) 02:38, 15 August 2011 (UTC)

I think you are exactly right. I grew up in Texas and I have heard of the Gannet oil field all of my life. I guess I would direct you to Help:Starting_a_new_page. Do a google search for good references. This could be a great article.Jarhed (talk) 07:46, 20 August 2011 (UTC)

This gigantic "article" is an absolute disaster. Huge lists of non-notable people, unsourced claims, and just ... stuff. The Mark of the Beast (talk) 23:13, 13 August 2011 (UTC)

I agree with your evaluation. If I may, please let me tell you how I evaluate such articles. If the article contains no BLP problems, I let it go. If it does, I do my best to fix it. I don't see any BLP issues in that article, so good luck.Jarhed (talk) 07:53, 20 August 2011 (UTC)

Hi all. In the same fashion List of minor planets is a list of an official catalog, would be List of topics covered by 1911 Britannica allowed? I mean an index with all topics, linking to the Wikipedia equivalent articles. I know that there is a WikiProject, but I'm speaking about a list in the main namespace. Regards. emijrp (talk) 10:54, 14 August 2011 (UTC)

Those two things are entirely different. The first is a desirable list which someone else has already drawn up, so we can borrow it. The second is an undesirable list, IMHO. - Jarry1250 ^{[Weasel? Discuss.]} 13:45, 14 August 2011 (UTC)

The distinction is that one is a list of (more or less) noteworthy objects of the same class. The other is a table of contents for a book. We don't tend to find tables of contents of books to be notable. That the list of (more or less) noteworthy objects of the same class may also be the table of contents of a book is neither here nor there. --Tagishsimon (talk) 02:42, 15 August 2011 (UTC)

It may not be a Wikipedia topic, but it can be found on Wikisource with not only topics laid out in alphabetical order, but many of the actual articles. There is also the Template:EB1911 poster which is used on many articles on Wikipedia also found in that edition of the Encyclopedia Britannica, where you can use the what links here link to obtain the list. More to the point, not only is such a list desirable (contrary to what is said above), but it is being done... just not on Wikipedia for the most part. I hope that helps. I do believe all of the articles in the 1911 edition should have Wikipedia articles, even if those articles are in some cases just a regurgitation of the 1911 edition (sadly....) The primary kinds of articles which haven't been updated are notable individuals at the time of the publication of this edition of the encyclopedia (famous folks in 1911 aren't so famous now or at least don't have many modern fans willing to write an article about them) or about some more obscure topics that for whatever reason nobody has bothered updating.

There still is work to be done with this huge database of information, and it is useful to note that a great many Wikipedia articles did get their initial seed from this edition of the Encyclopedia Britannica, even if the current article has little or nothing to do with that original seed. You would have to go into the deep historical archives of Wikipedia to find some of the background from that project of ancient (in internet time) origin. --Robert Horning (talk) 06:20, 20 August 2011 (UTC)

I just witnessed the agonizing delete of some topic lists that covered the Time magazine 100 list of notable people each year. The editors that created those lists obviously put a ton of work into that effort, and now it is gone. If those lists were of questionable worth, so is this one. I recommend that you don't put any effort into this that you would be sorry for if it were deleted.Jarhed (talk) 08:01, 20 August 2011 (UTC)

Wikipedia:WikiProject Missing encyclopedic articles/1911 verification — Dispenser 13:41, 20 August 2011 (UTC)

The article is about a geographical/geological feature, and IT DOESN'T CONTAIN A MAP!!! Or even a link to a map. The article is excellent, but articles on geology (mostly), geography, and war by definition require a map. Tapered (talk) 17:59, 20 August 2011 (UTC)

You're right, that's odd -- it should at least have the geo coordinates thing. ♫ Melodia Chaconne ♫ (talk) 18:05, 20 August 2011 (UTC)

(edit conflict) Seeing as how it's an article about an 100-mile-long range I can understand how it may be difficult to include a map of the feature. That said, it's an excellent point, and map would further improve the article. A featured article, like all other articles, can still be improved further. I'd bring this up on the talk page of the article. elektrikSHOOS (talk) 18:07, 20 August 2011 (UTC)

Great idea. Thanks! Tapered (talk) 20:37, 20 August 2011 (UTC)

There is a request to use a bot to replace flag icons in company and power stations infoboxes with country names. Before running a bot for these edits, a clear and widebroad consensus is needed, and therefore it seems appropriate also make an announcement here. You are welcome to make your comments at the relevant templates talk pages here and here. Beagel (talk) 19:03, 20 August 2011 (UTC)

The file commons:File:Coat of arms of Sri Lanka.svg, which is used on a very large number of pages (links), has been marked for nominated deletion on Wikimedia Commons for the following reason: Deletion requests August 2011. Rather than notify a large number of talk pages I am raising this on WP:AN and WP:VP to obtain the right intervention.

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The file commons:File:Flag of Sri Lanka.svg, which is used on a very large number of pages (links), has been marked for nominated deletion on Wikimedia Commons for the following reason: Deletion requests August 2011. Rather than notify a large number of talk pages I am raising this on WP:AN and WP:VP to obtain the right intervention.

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I wonder is anyone care to comment on the Discussion of Notability about Alexander Pichushkin. קולנואני (talk) 16:24, 21 August 2011 (UTC)

An RfC to determine the threshold for successful Requests for bureaucratship is now at Wikipedia:Requests for comment/Requests for bureaucratship threshold. All of the community is invited to comment. Thanks. - Hydroxonium (T•C•V) 01:58, 22 August 2011 (UTC)

Hello everybody.

While I was doing my Global Sysop work, I just developed a new tool on the Toolserver which displays data about a unified SUL account and a list of local unattached accounts using the same name.

Everybody always used VVV's SULutil, but it does not display global data anymore. Some people have switched to Special:CentralAuth, but this one do not display status and unattached accounts. That's why I have written a tool that can display all of this data easily.

So feel free to use it. Any comment or bug report will be welcomed by mail or on my meta talk page.

Here is a direct link : http://toolserver.org/~quentinv57/tools/sulinfo.php

Cordially, -- Quentinv57 (talk) 13:32, 19 August 2011 (UTC)

Perhaps the target for sulutil: should be updated since it seems vvv's tool has broken (?) and they don't appear to be very active these days.

Thank you for the new tool! The "last activity" is especially useful for WP:Handling SUL conflicts. I will probably call it from {{user23}}. –xeno^talk 13:36, 19 August 2011 (UTC)

Hello. I don't know where to request it such a change. Can you please help to find ? Thanks -- Quentinv57 (talk) 16:25, 19 August 2011 (UTC)

This has been done. –xeno^talk 02:39, 22 August 2011 (UTC)

Yes, the solution was to edit the m:Interwiki map. Thanks -- Quentinv57 (talk) 10:08, 22 August 2011 (UTC)

What's the difference between Computer information system and Computer information systems？ I'm not an IT expert so I can't tell the reason of redirecting the former one to Computer science and the latter one to Management information system. None of the above destinations explain the rationale for such redirect in their content. Readers might be misled by such redirect. --Quest for Truth (talk) 09:37, 22 August 2011 (UTC)

Would an experienced user please help me talk to User talk:Rafmarham regarding references. The user is adding content in good faith, but is often failing to support additions with citations. This is spoiling some developed articles, and creating work for others who have to sift through his edits. The JPS^{talk to me} 10:14, 22 August 2011 (UTC)

The file commons:File:KylieShowgirl.jpg, which is used on a very large number of pages (links), has been marked for nominated deletion on Wikimedia Commons for the following reason: Deletion requests July 2011. Rather than notify a large number of talk pages I am raising this on WP:AN and WP:VP to obtain the right intervention.

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The second 2011 elections for Wikimedia stewards will be taking place shortly, and nominations for candidates are being accepted now. Anyone who is interested in either running or voting should review the guidelines at m:Stewards/elections 2011-2/Guidelines. While the English Wikipedia project is likely the largest and most self-contained of the Wikimedia projects, stewards do have some effect here too, and as members of the greater Wikimedia community, your voice is just as wanted and needed. Thank you! -- Avi (talk) 14:26, 22 August 2011 (UTC)

The file commons:File:No Karl Marx.JPG, which is used on a very large number of pages (links), has been marked for nominated deletion on Wikimedia Commons for the following reason: Deletion requests August 2011. Rather than notify a large number of talk pages I am raising this on WP:AN and WP:VP to obtain the right intervention.

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When I went to look for the wikipedia article for Avago I was surprised to end up at a page for a dead TV channel rather than the semiconductor corporation that was spun off by Agilent. An active and fairly major electronics manufacturer seems far more significant than a dead TV channel but then i'm biased because electronics is my subject area.

So I thought i'd ask for some more opinions first before making any moves. Especially as this looks like it will require an admin to do the moves as there appears to be some history merging required)

Neither page is substantially bigger than the other one. The lede is badly formatted (I will fix) - the hatnote to the other page should be at the top. If you feel it should definitely be the "other way around" - I would suggest place a WP:RM on the talk page proposing a move from Avago Technologies to Avago and Avago to ? -Avago (TV channel)? As there are only two possible entries for Avago, then we would not normally create a DAB page.  Ronhjones  ^(Talk) 20:39, 23 August 2011 (UTC)

Ok, I looked around and found Category:Women's_organizations ... It was hidden within Category:Organizations by membership ... And the Lists of Organizations are, to me, a redundant navigational directory (particularly since the Lists are really incomplete, unlike the Categories).

One other item that I'd like to see gone: "Category:Organization by membership" (yet another list, but disguised under a Category this time)... Organizations are also in Categories by subject, which makes sense. But there's also "Organization by membership", which as a navigational tool, is useless, and also redundant. It just sends users down a haphazard, dead-end path (like how I got lost).

Another redundant navigating tool is "Lists of Organizations" which drills down to more lists, and lists of lists, and lists of lists of lists.... completely redundant navigation mess, because there are Categories already for organizations. Why is there any need for Lists of Organizations, on top of Categories for Organizations? I don't think Wikipedia really need a list of all zillion organizations in a given country, city, etc.

OttawaAC (talk) 02:17, 22 August 2011 (UTC)

The hierarchy makes sense as explained. Category:Organizations by membership is a subcategory of Category:Organizations, to hold further subcategory for women's organizations, youth organizations, religious organizations, LGBT organizations, etc. Were this subcategory not here, Category:Organizations would be swamped.

As for lists v. categories, my preference is for categories, as it's easier to maintain them—category membership is handled at the article level, rather than having to update the list (and sort the list). —C.Fred (talk) 02:27, 22 August 2011 (UTC)

But as to your question: List articles would be deleted via WP:Articles for deletion; categories would be deleted via WP:Categories for discussion. —C.Fred (talk) 02:28, 22 August 2011 (UTC)

Wanted to add one more thing. I want to add a justification for removing "Category:Women's organizations" from "Organizations by membership". Women's rights organizations can and do sometimes include male as well as female members; so Organizations by membership -->Women's organizations, would not make sense: groups with non-female members would not belong in that "category".

Also: "Organization by membership -->Women's organizations, implies that women only belong to the organizations in the list to be found there. Which is illogical; women worldwide belong to thousands (and thousands) of male/female membership organizations, of every stripe. So does that mean that every organization with women as members belongs under "Organization by membership -->Women's organizations"?

Seems like a loss of logic in there, that's my 2 cents.

Will go over to the WP:Categories for discussion, thanks for the links. OttawaAC (talk) 02:31, 22 August 2011 (UTC)

You will want to read Wikipedia:Categories, lists, and navigation templates. Claims that a list and a cat seem redundant, and therefore one or the other should be deleted, are usually met with prompt and firm opposition. WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:34, 23 August 2011 (UTC)

The file File:Old Man of the Mountain overlay 2.jpg, which is used on a very large number of pages (links), has been marked for speedy deletion here on Wikipedia for the following reason: All Wikipedia files with unknown copyright status. Rather than notify a large number of talk pages I am raising this on WP:AN and WP:VP to obtain the right intervention.

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Thanks This notification is provided by a Bot --CommonsNotificationBot (talk) 20:52, 23 August 2011 (UTC)

I've removed the tag (for reasons explained on the image talk page), so unless someone disagrees and thinks it should be deleted, this is dealt with. --Floquenbeam (talk) 22:35, 23 August 2011 (UTC)

Is there a WikiProject or list of users who specialize in adding IPA pronunciations to articles on request? I know a few articles that could probably benefit from it, as they have non-intuitive pronunciations, but I don't really understand IPA well enough to add them myself. Acdixon ^{(talk • contribs • count)} 15:08, 23 August 2011 (UTC)

I'm sure you could find some help at the language reference desk. —Akrabbim^talk 15:12, 23 August 2011 (UTC)

Thanks. I'll cross-post this there. Acdixon ^{(talk • contribs • count)} 15:20, 23 August 2011 (UTC)

Or add inline {{Pronunciation needed}}, producing ^{[pronunciation?]}. The page then ends up in a dedicated category. -DePiep^{[pronunciation?]} (talk) 21:25, 24 August 2011 (UTC)

The file commons:File:IslamicWorldNusretColpan.jpg, which is used on a very large number of pages (links), has been marked for speedy deletion on Wikimedia Commons for the following reason: Other speedy deletions. Rather than notify a large number of talk pages I am raising this on WP:AN and WP:VP to obtain the right intervention.

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The file commons:File:Thriller.png, which is used on a very large number of pages (links), has been marked for nominated deletion on Wikimedia Commons for the following reason: Deletion requests August 2011. Rather than notify a large number of talk pages I am raising this on WP:AN and WP:VP to obtain the right intervention.

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The file commons:File:IslamicWorldNusretColpan.jpg, which is used on a very large number of pages (links), has been deleted on Wikimedia Commons for the following reason: Copyright violation: Nusret Çolpan died on May 31, 2008. According to the Article 27 of the Turkish copyright law, its copyright has not expired. -- Takabeg. Rather than notify a large number of talk pages I am raising this on WP:AN and WP:VP to obtain the right intervention.

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This notification is provided by a Bot --CommonsNotificationBot (talk) 10:08, 25 August 2011 (UTC)

 Done Fixed by removing it from the template. --Errant ^(chat!) 10:38, 25 August 2011 (UTC)

I have some new information regarding a discrepancy on the Marlin Model 60 page, 4th section. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marlin_Model_60#Versions_and_year_of_manufacture The author is mistaken about the Model 600 only being manufactued until 89. I own a Model 600 and it was made in 1991. I don't know if there were any later years for the version. But I do know mine is older then what is posted. I called Marlin with my serial number for the year. It still is a rare gun but I didn't want others to be confused or mistaken. Thanks! — Preceding unsigned comment added by 64.255.164.46 (talk) 16:07, 25 August 2011 (UTC)

You should probably take this up at Talk:Marlin Model 60 and/or Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Firearms. Beeblebrox (talk) 17:57, 25 August 2011 (UTC)

...was vandalized in May 2009 and not fully reverted until just now. Is this a record? Ten Pound Hammer, his otters and a clue-bat • ^{(Otters want attention)} 21:38, 24 August 2011 (UTC)

27 months? I doubt it, but it's certainly impressive lame. Powers ^T 17:51, 25 August 2011 (UTC)

No, it's not a record. A couple of weeks ago on Provo, Utah, I reverted the last little trace of this vandal edit from November 2008. But I'm sure that's far from a record. Ntsimp (talk) 22:05, 25 August 2011 (UTC)

I remember reading about vandalism that lasted for a good four years, maybe more. Forget what though. ♫ Melodia Chaconne ♫ (talk) 22:07, 25 August 2011 (UTC)

See Wikipedia:List of hoaxes on Wikipedia. Graham87 10:55, 27 August 2011 (UTC)

I have notices a detail about Category:Riots by country: some countries have "Riots in Foo" categories, and others have "Riots and civil unrest in Foo" categories. I thought in proposing to rename the categories to a uniform scheme, but on second thought, there are many options on which name to use, and what which ones to nominate. A riot is a type of civil unrest, but civil unrest may manifest in other forms than riots (but perhaps that's too much detail for categorization). Should I propose to rename either half to "Riots in..." or "Riots and civil unrest in..."?. Should I propose to rename everything to "Civil unrest in..."? Or should I let things stay as they are? Cambalachero (talk) 14:47, 27 August 2011 (UTC)

"Civil unrest in..." seems the most appropriate after a quick look at the members (some articles are more high-level and only touch on the riots that occurred in the context of a wider civil unrest). –xeno^talk 14:55, 27 August 2011 (UTC)

The file commons:File:BSicon ACCe.svg, which is used on a very large number of pages (links), has been deleted on Wikimedia Commons for the following reason: Incorrectly named. Rather than notify a large number of talk pages I am raising this on WP:AN and WP:VP to obtain the right intervention.

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The file commons:File:BSicon ACCa.svg, which is used on a very large number of pages (links), has been deleted on Wikimedia Commons for the following reason: Incorrectly named. Rather than notify a large number of talk pages I am raising this on WP:AN and WP:VP to obtain the right intervention.

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Does anyone here have a subscription at vector-images.com?--Antemister (talk) 21:10, 27 August 2011 (UTC)

• This would probably be a request best directed to the Resource Exchange. ╟─TreasuryTag►Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster─╢ 21:12, 27 August 2011 (UTC)

I want to add a biography for American actress Julia Dean (1830-1869), who was a top star around the Civil War era.

There's already a biography on Wikipedia for a "Julia Dean (actress)" who was born in 1879. How do I add the biography for the second actress named Julia Dean?

Thanks! OttawaAC (talk) 00:09, 29 August 2011 (UTC)

Julia Dean (actress born 1830) per WP:QUALIFIER. By the way, the sources I found say 1830-1868. PrimeHunter (talk) 00:20, 29 August 2011 (UTC)

Way back in July I !voted at an AfD called Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/I_Men..._ke_I_Den. Since then, no one else has voted, and it has been neither closed nor relisted. What's going on? Guideline & Policy Wonk (talk) 02:18, 29 August 2011 (UTC)

The nominator failed to notify users who monitor AfD discussion by adding it to the AfD log. This is step III at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion#How to list pages for deletion. I have done it now [4] starting the normal seven day period. PrimeHunter (talk) 02:30, 29 August 2011 (UTC)

Here are some significant articles that have hatnotes to insignificant articles:

• Atheism
• Drake equation
• Detente

All of these hatnotes link to articles that I believe could be deleted as non-notable. I think that all of these hatnotes were created as COI spam.

To fix these, I would like to create a separate disambiguation pages for each article. Note that the disambiguation pages will only contain two links: one to the significant article and one to the insignificant article.

I have been encountering these types of hatnote link spam a lot lately, and I have to admit that they bother me.

Tell me if I am being unreasonable. If not, tell me what you think of my solution, or what I should do instead.Jarhed (talk) 09:01, 20 August 2011 (UTC)

I think Wikipedia is in a bit of a hard place with this sort of thing, so I'd be interested to hear what others thought. If the album/band/song (which most such links are) is not notable, then one can of course request deletion of the page. I don't think these things are in bad faith; after all, the band Atheist is certainly notable, and it is called the same thing. So there's definitely the possibility people end up at atheism when they meant atheist (band). It's just whether what one must imagine is a small confusion (and/or a small inconvenience, since people I would have thought would be aware of the primary meaning) is worth the hatnote to avoid it. On that, I don't know, but for some reason I would feel happier keeping in the first case than the latter two. Grandiose (me, talk, contribs) 10:18, 20 August 2011 (UTC)

If a hatnote like this concerns an editor, then I think it's perfectly fine for him/him to make a diambiguation hatnote, partly because "comparative notability" is hard to define, expecially for music in this fractured media world (e.g., I've never heard of Athetist the band).

A disambiguation hatnote is never wrong. After all, there's even a disambiguation hatnote on Jesus, which is about as extreme an example as you can find of "far more notable than any other usage". - DavidWBrooks (talk) 12:49, 20 August 2011 (UTC)

Perhaps we are miscommunicating. I am proposing the creation of a disambiguation page to replace a hard linked hatnote, just like the one on the Jesus article. You say that disambiguation hatnotes are never wrong, but what if the one on the Jesus article said, For the satanic, death-metal band, see Jesus (band)?Jarhed (talk) 07:50, 21 August 2011 (UTC)

You're being unreasonable. The whole point of these hatnotes like they are is because it's pointless to have a disambig page with two entries since it can be done this way. Calling it 'spam' is pretty bad faith. ♫ Melodia Chaconne ♫ (talk) 14:03, 20 August 2011 (UTC)

I disagree: A two-item disambiguation page is not pointless - it's a spot for future articles to be linked, and encouraging links is one of wikipedia's core strengths. Like any other wikipedia article, those pages can grow in interesting ways. - DavidWBrooks (talk) 15:02, 20 August 2011 (UTC)

And I disagree with that - creating a disambiguation page is trivial if three topics come into play. But with two it simply adds an extra click, which is non-optimal for our readers. Who cares if there are two topics, one of high visibility and one of low - a subset of people are looking for the less notable topic, and we are helping them with that in a relatively non-intrusive way. --Errant ^(chat!) 18:31, 20 August 2011 (UTC)

The reason it matters is because I believe the articles are COI spam. I could prove this by nominating them for deletion, but I would prefer not to do that.Jarhed (talk) 18:50, 20 August 2011 (UTC)

If you think they are in fact not notable, nonimate them for AFD. If they are, and their articles should stay, then they aren't spam and the way it's done now is the best way. Period. ♫ Melodia Chaconne ♫ (talk) 20:01, 20 August 2011 (UTC)

Come on now, there are very few WP policies that are as rigid as that. I don't *want* to delete them. Some editors took the time to write them and they aren't hurting anybody in any way. I just don't think that some "thrash metal" link at the top of a scientific article or some such is encyclopedic. Cheers!Jarhed (talk) 07:43, 21 August 2011 (UTC)

I can see one might want a little sensitivity in phrasing the link sometimes even if the target article isn't censored. For instance if we have an article about asylums for battered women a hatnote saying 'the group that say they want to fuck bitches' should be toned down considerably. It is just a link and not saying anything about the current topic. I would not remove it though. Dmcq (talk) 10:15, 21 August 2011 (UTC)

I'd rather not see two-item dab pages. I don't think we should use our personal opinions to decide whether a second item is important enough to get a direct link. If there's currently only one other page that the reader might want to end up at, then we should let that reader click directly there. We should not send the reader through an intervening page merely because some editor thought that the only other available target sounded too trivial to deserve a normal link. WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:28, 23 August 2011 (UTC)

Yeah, bloated hatnote lists are a pet peeve of mine. They are almost always pointing to trivial pages that most people won't care about. Anything beyond a single, very basic hatnote is an unnecessary distraction from the main article. I'd like to be able to just turn that off on my display. But then I'm just an old grognard. Shrug. Regards, RJH (talk) 19:11, 30 August 2011 (UTC)

You can hide those BTW. Just make a tweak in your CSS stylesheet and they'll be gone. Headbomb {talk / contribs / physics / books} 19:21, 30 August 2011 (UTC)

Is this feature well-used by our editors? The diff handler can be quite confusing to those not in the know and it holds a prime position next to "Save page" and "Preview" which arguably does the job better. If it's used, clearly there's a case for keeping it just like that. If not, perhaps it's time for a discussion about relegating it a bit? Grandiose (me, talk, contribs) 16:10, 26 August 2011 (UTC)

I use it almost every time I make an article edit. What harm does it do? —Akrabbim^talk 16:13, 26 August 2011 (UTC)

I use it from time to time. It's a good way of keeping track of changes currently being made throughout the entire article, for instance as a result of general copyediting. –MuZemike 19:47, 26 August 2011 (UTC)

I use it constantly. As much or more than "show preview". –xeno^talk 19:48, 26 August 2011 (UTC)

I use it frequently, especially if I get interrupted in the middle of a change or change my mind mid-edit about what should be done. WhatamIdoing (talk) 20:42, 30 August 2011 (UTC)

The Village Pump is probably not a representative sample of all editors. --RA (talk) 20:46, 30 August 2011 (UTC)

Hi, Routledge has offered 15 editors three months' free access to the academic journal Feminist Economics, which will include access to the archives. The sign-up sheet is at Wikipedia:Feminist Economics. Anyone interested should feel free to sign up, including if you're outside the eligibility, as it's not something that's likely to have a lot of takers. Cheers, SlimVirgin ^{TALK|CONTRIBS} 22:48, 29 August 2011 (UTC)

A link that may be of interest George Monbiot: The Guardian.--ClemRutter (talk) 06:54, 30 August 2011 (UTC)

The file commons:File:Seal of Prime Ministry of the Republic of Turkey.svg, which is used on a very large number of pages (links), has been marked for nominated deletion on Wikimedia Commons for the following reason: Media without a source as of 30 August 2011. Rather than notify a large number of talk pages I am raising this on WP:AN and WP:VP to obtain the right intervention.

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Is it here or elsewhere that I should raise the question of the placing of articles that are already in Category:Society of St. Pius X also in Category:Schisms in Christianity? If the Society is in schism, should not Category:Society of St. Pius X be made a subcategory of the other? However, in fact it is disputed whether the Society is in schism: while some sources say it is in schism, the Society itself denies it, and so has a curial cardinal of the Roman Catholic Church. Is it not a violation of NPOV to take sides in the dispute by placing these articles in Category:Schisms in Christianity? Esoglou (talk) 15:35, 24 August 2011 (UTC)

Categories are for navigation, not definition. The question to ask is, if a reader wanted to learn more about schisms, might the reader be interested in this article? An organization whose status as a schism is sincerely disputed might be interesting to such a reader. WhatamIdoing (talk) 20:40, 30 August 2011 (UTC)

Thanks. Perhaps some day soon I can do something about making the subcategory. Esoglou (talk) 20:52, 30 August 2011 (UTC)

The articles mention the schism and there are books as well as chapters in books devoted to the schism, hence the categorization, and I'm sure an equal number of meritorious arguments against it. It is not maintaining NPOV to sweep this under a rug or deny it. As editors all we can do is present the facts and have the reader judge for themselves.--Mike - Μολὼν λαβέ 21:08, 30 August 2011 (UTC)

I am confident that WhatamIdoing is right in saying that the Wikipedia navigation categories are not intended to present as an objectively existing "the schism" what "books as well as chapters in books" both assert and deny. Esoglou (talk) 09:01, 31 August 2011 (UTC)

Just a really general observation... I was digging through images at the New York Public Library's digital archives online, looking for copyright-free images to use on Wikipedia. I came across some very interesting old illustrations of engineering technology (some going back to 1702), industrial technology in England from the mid-1800s, etc. So I copied a few and added them to articles here on engineering and specific industry topics.

It was then that I noticed how limited the history information is in Wikipedia for fields like engineering and manufacturing. The information here on those sorts of topics tends to focus very much on current technology. Which is understandable. It would be wonderful, though, to see more stuff added on the history of these subjects. Where did this cutting edge technology come from? How did it evolve?

Seeing how technology was actually implemented in the past, and how it was discovered or improved, is fascinating stuff. I'd love to see more of that kind of information added to Wikipedia.

OttawaAC (talk) 20:36, 28 August 2011 (UTC)

De-industrialisation is needed as well. There are just a limited number of foot-soldiers. It would be great if you come and help. --ClemRutter (talk) 06:58, 30 August 2011 (UTC)

Ok, I've got dibs on de-industrialisation then. I can flesh that one out a bit, based on habitual reading of the business section. No expertise there, but the larger issues interest me, so I can work on that one.

Old engineering discoveries will take more time, though. I know absolutely nothing about that area. It would make some interesting reading, though.

OttawaAC (talk) 21:16, 30 August 2011 (UTC)

The problem you are likely to hit is that industrial history tends to have only limited coverage in the general history sources and other than things like railways the more specialist stuff isn't that availible.©Geni 00:01, 2 September 2011 (UTC)

see this very interesting article. Broccolo (talk) 18:19, 1 September 2011 (UTC)

If my impression of how far to the right the target audience seems to be is accurate, then being accused of a left wing bias is not a bad thing, to be perfectly frank. Resolute 18:32, 1 September 2011 (UTC)

How is something published on David Horowitz's blog 'in the news'? He evidently doesn't like Wikipedia. So what? AndyTheGrump (talk) 18:37, 1 September 2011 (UTC)

The file commons:File:Testosterone structure.png, which is used on a very large number of pages (links), has been marked for nominated deletion on Wikimedia Commons for the following reason: Deletion requests September 2011. Rather than notify a large number of talk pages I am raising this on WP:AN and WP:VP to obtain the right intervention.

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This notification is provided by a Bot --CommonsNotificationBot (talk) 11:09, 2 September 2011 (UTC)

The file commons:File:Horloge-republicaine1.jpg, which is used on a very large number of pages (links), has been marked for nominated deletion on Wikimedia Commons for the following reason: Deletion requests September 2011. Rather than notify a large number of talk pages I am raising this on WP:AN and WP:VP to obtain the right intervention.

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This notification is provided by a Bot --CommonsNotificationBot (talk) 07:31, 5 September 2011 (UTC)

Most of the links are via the User:UserboxMania/DayName userbox. -- John of Reading (talk) 09:18, 5 September 2011 (UTC)

The file commons:File:Asia orthographic Caucasus Urals bondary.svg, which is used on a very large number of pages (links), has been deleted on Wikimedia Commons for the following reason: Exact or scaled-down duplicate: Exact or scaled down duplicate: commons::File:Asia (orthographic projection).svg. Rather than notify a large number of talk pages I am raising this on WP:AN and WP:VP to obtain the right intervention.

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• Check for the type of usage in articles and templates (usually infoboxes)
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This notification is provided by a Bot --CommonsNotificationBot (talk) 13:58, 5 September 2011 (UTC)

Resolved

 – by an edit to Template:Countries of Asia (edit | talk | history | links | watch | logs) -- John of Reading (talk) 14:51, 5 September 2011 (UTC)

...and three edits by Avenue (talk · contribs). I must remember to look at Special:Contributions/CommonsDelinker next time. -- John of Reading (talk) 16:07, 5 September 2011 (UTC)

---

A brief overview of Wikipedia Takes Video Montreal 2011; despite the Hurricane Irene, 110 participants showed up from 282 subscriptions... t'sé des gens courageux là! Thanks to Roberto Rocha and The Montreal Gazette who accept to put this video under free licence! They contribute a lot of the success of this Wikipedia Takes Your City of Montreal. Antaya (talk) 01:49, 2 September 2011 (UTC)

That was a nice video. :-) Killiondude (talk) 01:09, 7 September 2011 (UTC)

Hephaestus Books represents a new publishing paradigm, allowing disparate content sources to be curated into cohesive, relevant, and informative books. To date, this content has been curated from Wikipedia articles and images under Creative Commons licensing, although as Hephaestus Books continues to increase in scope and dimension, more licensed and public domain content is being added. We believe books such as this represent a new and exciting lexicon in the sharing of human knowledge.

The above is how this publisher describe themselves and what they do. Check the listings on Abebooks. [5]

— Preceding unsigned comment added by Stuartfanning (talk • contribs) 22:30, 6 September 2011 (UTC)

All of which is fine so long as they cite the source, which (I assume) they do. Check out our terms of use and the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License under which we sail. --Tagishsimon (talk) 23:59, 6 September 2011 (UTC)

See also the thread immediately above. –xeno^talk 00:03, 7 September 2011 (UTC)

See my comment on previous thread - chris_j_wood (talk) 08:21, 7 September 2011 (UTC)

In my editing, I constantly find people who have made copies of articles as a subpage of their user page. These subpages are often just left "as is" to linger, simply accumulating tweaks by random editors and perhaps an occasional bot as time goes by. I've been an editor for almost 6 years and I have no idea why people do this. I used to think they were just user space drafts that got abandoned but the fraction that appear to be copied so that they can be legitimately developed seems to be very low. I also used to think that people would do this to "preserve" articles that would likely be deleted and hence use the copy as a way to side-step notability guidelines. But too often they pages of of legitimate articles. Often this practice is done by editors with rather few edits and I'm surprised they even know how to make a user subpage. What the hell is the deal with this practice? Why are people doing it? Jason Quinn (talk) 14:46, 7 September 2011 (UTC)

I don't know, but as you come across them you should be sure to tag them with {{userspace draft}} and perhaps flag for deletion per WP:UP#COPIES. –xeno^talk 14:49, 7 September 2011 (UTC)

That's usually what I do and until now I've always skeptically assumed these copies were drafts but I no longer consider that a plausible explanation. There's something else going on here. Jason Quinn (talk) 14:52, 7 September 2011 (UTC)

Another editor tip. Usually I find these articles because they are in the encyclopedia categories but user-space articles should not be in the encyclopedia categories. You should delete, comment-out, or make category links of the categories in the draft. Jason Quinn (talk) 14:58, 7 September 2011 (UTC)

Userspace drafts are a normal part of some editors' workflow, including some of our very best writers. That said, there are of course plenty of people who simply save copies of a particular revision in their userspace and forget about it. It's usually not that difficult to tell the difference, though you wouldn't think that from some of the drama that gets caused at MfD for them. Chris Cunningham (user:thumperward) - talk 16:59, 7 September 2011 (UTC)

Just wondering but have we ever gone through and checked to see how many editors who have left (Something big like 2 years) have these? It might be interesting to see what the numbers of userspace drafts are. There might be a way to bot delete some of these if we can find some common trands. --Kumioko (talk) 18:52, 7 September 2011 (UTC)

Here are a couple more scenarios we might want to investigate.

1. IP editors have subpages like this one and are the worth keeping?
2. User spaces or IP's that redirect like this one.
3. User space drafts and subpages of editors who have been banned.
4. Crap like this
5. Etc. --Kumioko (talk) 19:10, 7 September 2011 (UTC)

Some of these may possibly be the other way around (i.e. user space draft turned into an article). I believe there was a project some time ago that searched for abandoned user space drafts and turned them in to useful articles. So it may be possible that instead of a user copying an artcle to their userspace, that is was in their userspace and then copied to article space. But I could be wrong. - Hydroxonium (T•C•V) 03:20, 8 September 2011 (UTC)

Hi I'am new to wikipedia and trying to learn some new functions. How does this template function works Template:Number of portals? Does it count the number of portals automatically or must it be counted by person? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Stefandprins (talk • contribs) 19:41, 7 September 2011 (UTC)

It has to be edited just like any other page. The page User:Zetawoof/PortalList is generated automatically from time to time, and this will help provide an accurate figure to put in the template. -- John of Reading (talk) 21:05, 7 September 2011 (UTC)

The file commons:File:FlagofAssyria.svg, which is used on a very large number of pages (links), has been marked for nominated deletion on Wikimedia Commons for the following reason: Deletion requests September 2011. Rather than notify a large number of talk pages I am raising this on WP:AN and WP:VP to obtain the right intervention.

What to do

A discussion about whether to delete the file will now take place on Commons. If you feel the deletion can be contested then please do so (commons:COM:SPEEDY has further information). Otherwise:

• Check for the type of usage in articles and templates (usually infoboxes)
• If the deletion of the image will cause a problem, prepare to fix it:
  • Using a local redirect
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  • Contact someone at commons to delay deletion or work out a plan to overcome issues with the deletion

This notification is provided by a Bot --CommonsNotificationBot (talk) 20:22, 7 September 2011 (UTC)

This is mostly used as decoration via six templates. It's needed at Assyrian flag where we could claim fair use. -- John of Reading (talk) 21:00, 7 September 2011 (UTC)

Your attention is called to a requested change in name of the above article. Sincerely, GeorgeLouis (talk) 22:31, 8 September 2011 (UTC)

What has the article posted at have to do with the title of the article. There seems to be a complete disconnect.1archie99 (talk) 11:08, 9 September 2011 (UTC)

It was vandalised, the old page is now restored. AD 11:27, 9 September 2011 (UTC)

Hello,

I would know why the articles Sociedade Brasileira de Matemática Aplicada e Computacional and Olimpíada Brasileira de Matemática das Escolas Públicas were marked as Unambiguous advertising or promotion and were eliminated after. If these items are Unambiguous advertising or promotion, so all articles about mathematics in Brazil are also Unambiguous advertising or promotion too.

Andrevruas (talk) 14:58, 9 September 2011 (UTC)

I agree that the action of <<<07:28, 9 September 2011 Fastily (talk | contribs) deleted "Sociedade Brasileira de Matemática Aplicada e Computacional" ‎ (G11: Unambiguous advertising or promotion)>>> was too harsh. I am sure the article was savageable. It is not about some startup or pizza hut spot promotion. It is about a national scientific society. With this nonchalant attitide from admins no wonder new users quickly abandon wikipedia. Loew Galitz (talk) 15:47, 9 September 2011 (UTC)

Thank god the article returned. Really, if the article was considered advertising I really definitely would no longer work here more. Special thanks for you and User:Graeme Bartlett. -- Andrevruas (talk) 03:46, 10 September 2011 (UTC)

(I originally posted this in the technical section, but it might be more appropriate here.)

Per discussion I have created a series of historical route diagram templates for the MBTA Orange Line. You can view them here. The original plan was to align all 5 horizontally to make the changes easier to follow. However, I am unable to find a way to do so. Simply listing them stacks them vertically; putting them in a table breaks the RDT formatting. I don't have the html/css skills to craft my own solution. Pi.1415926535 (talk) 17:26, 9 September 2011 (UTC)

I suggest the following rule:

Any good discussion relating to whether something deserves a new article must have a minimum of 3 (not 2) Wikipedians. (Note. Today, Blake and I were disagreeing about whether Adventure World should have a Wikipedia article, and we were the only 2 Wikipedians to discuss anything about it. Georgia guy (talk) 17:40, 9 September 2011 (UTC)

You can request a third opinion through the usual channels, but requiring three people to participate in every single article creation is a vioation of WP:Be bold and impractical. We're WP:VOLUNTEERs: you can't make us do anything. WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:54, 9 September 2011 (UTC)

This "rule" suggestion seems to imply that too many articles are being created that deserve to be immediately deleted. Other than WP:CREEP for the sake of simply creating news rules, what is your motivation and what do you see wrong about Wikipedia that requires the need for a new rule? --Robert Horning (talk) 21:20, 9 September 2011 (UTC)

Hi. :) I am in disagreement with another user concerning the wording of Template:Divbox (recently retained at TfD). The conversation is here.

The crux of the conversation concerns the use of decoration in namespaces, with the documentation for the template having been recently changed to read:

while in other [than article] namespaces decoration should usually be avoided.

What I'd like to know is whether or not this is true. Is decoration discouraged in user pages, essays and WikiProject spaces, for example? If so, is that documented somewhere? If not, should it be? --Moonriddengirl ^(talk) 10:19, 7 September 2011 (UTC)

It's worth noting that in the above discussion I've specifically exempted userspace. As for the matter at hand, it's common sense. Arbitrary styling is distracting and we have a well-used set of standard templates that can be used for most purposes. Cooking up new tables and the like should be done sparingly where required. Chris Cunningham (user:thumperward) - talk 11:15, 7 September 2011 (UTC)

Common sense is not exactly uniform. I can accept that perhaps I'm lacking in common sense and just don't know it, but I think a lot of people who've used this template are pretty sensible--like, say, Xeno. I did copy your language change to the template documentation verbatim, aside from the clarification in brackets, and it didn't mention user pages. But I'll tweak the question, then, since I presume that was an oversight: Is decoration discouraged in essays and WikiProject spaces, for example? And I'll add, given the example just linked, are colors discouraged in editnotices? --Moonriddengirl ^(talk) 11:26, 7 September 2011 (UTC)

I don't think its as simple as that Im afraid. Take portals for example. There are clearly a lot of different ones out there and they use quite a bit of what one might call decoration. Another example is WikiProjects as you mention above. For example an example of a fairly plain (and I don't mean that in a negative way at all) WikiProject would be WikiProject Omaha. An example of a more elaborate one would be WikiProject United States|WikiProject United States]]. I think a better wording for the above would be. Personally I don't agree at all with the new wording. If we strictly adhere to this then we end with all the portals, WikiProject pages, etc. looking exactly like articles and although we might be able to tone them down a bit I think this is very very bad idea and its gonna make a lot of users leave. Personally I would have an extremely hard time with trying to pass all the information on the Wikiproject United States page if I had to make it look like an article. Plus it could be confusing to the readers. --Kumioko (talk) 11:30, 7 September 2011 (UTC)

I don't mind making an exception for portals and WikiProject pages either, even though IMO there's seldom any actual need for the sort of Christmas tree styling which permeates that part of the project. (WP:FOOTY, for instance, gets by with the bare minimum of embellishment of this sort, and it's an extremely active project.) It's uses in parts of the project where rampant styling is not currently a major issue that I'm concerned with. However, at least asking people not to embellish pages simply for the sake of it would help greatly, as it would gradually increase the maintainability of many of the worst offenders. Chris Cunningham (user:thumperward) - talk 11:38, 7 September 2011 (UTC)

Chris, the TFD result was: Keep. This does not mean you should go around and remove the box from everywhere just because you don't like the result. –xeno^talk 12:44, 7 September 2011 (UTC)

TfD is a discussion and results other than deletion can have plenty of interpretation. This is not mob rule, and we do not consider all discussions to be distilled down to a single bold word when they are closed. The majority of the comments at the TfD said nothing of namespaces other than userspace and I've conceded that there's no consensus for removing decorative markup from userspace. The whole reason we're having further discussion is because there's still disagreement as to what to do outside of userspace (and a limited number of projectspace areas where decorative markup is widely used). Chris Cunningham (user:thumperward) - talk 12:52, 7 September 2011 (UTC)

Great. So discuss. Don't go around quietly removing it from everywhere. –xeno^talk 13:09, 7 September 2011 (UTC)

It would be a waste of time to discuss every individual removal before the fact; most of them are trivial. Of those which were reverted, I'm happy to discuss them individually and will do. Chris Cunningham (user:thumperward) - talk 13:14, 7 September 2011 (UTC)

It is not appropriate to simply edit to achieve your desired result given the discussion that did not support your view. Discuss first. –xeno^talk 13:21, 7 September 2011 (UTC)

The only firm conclusion reached in the TfD was that people shore do like them their purty user pages. I was pointedly ignored when I actually asked people for examples of useful instances of the template outside of user/projectspace, and it's only going and editing those examples which has actually generated discussion on them. It is pointless trying to debate this issue based on hypothetical examples prior to testing the current usage. As for achieving a fait accompli, we're talking about literally a dozen or so examples here from millions of articles; this is merely cleaning up loose ends from a long long time ago for the most part. Chris Cunningham (user:thumperward) - talk 13:53, 7 September 2011 (UTC)

I seem to be hearing a lot of WP:IDIDNTHEARTHAT or WP:IDONTWANTTOHEARTHAT. Although I agree that a lot of the spinning icons, streamers, banners and excessive icons are distracting on some pages they are not the articles. There are chanegs and some regulation that I think would be beneficial for the projects and portals but the thing is Chris although you are correct that it isn't a mob rule it also isn't every editor for themselves. Thats why we have guidelines. They can be flexed and even broken when need be but we can't have individual editors changing things from one style to another just cause they don't personally like it. Whether you choose to accept it or not Graphical design to some of the pages like Portals, WikiProject, etc is a good thing. It attracts the reader and establishes a degree of healthy individualism between projects, portals and users. I personally would not have as much interest in WP if I one day couldn't tell the differece between an article, a user page a portal and a WikiProject. I, unlike some, am not a minimalist and prefer a little color in my life. I belive most people feel the same way. Thats why they choose the pretty colorful cans and bottles with their favorate adult beverage rather than the black and white (kinda like the articles) cans that just say Beer. As for actual reasons, as a person who desins some websites, which are very familiar in purpose to portals and projects, there are several reasons why you want it to be somewhat attractive. Here are a few:

1. Commerce/Advertising and competition - To spur healthy competition and individualism between portals and WikiProjects. This generates interest in the projects and its purpose. Just as some states, cities, sports teams, etc are rivals with each other the some is often true of WikiProjects. Its not always a bad thing to be a little different than the other guy/gal.
2. Information - It allows the information to be easily identifiable. Whether by using tabs, different section, different colors, icons, bullets, numbers etc. All these things help to make the information more identifiable. The easier the information is to access the more time the editors can spend editing articles rather than digging for info.
3. We should perceive the projects, portals, newsletters and the like as we would a business. We are in the business of organizing information or distributing information to users who are interested about the topic. The projects act as a centralized point of organization about the topic, the collaborations and dives act as the mechanism to improve the content and the portals and newsletters act as a method of advertising information to the users who want it.
4. Professional Image - It presents a professional image of the topic. An ugly website could give some users a negative impression of the project and the topic. Thereby making them disinterested in participating.
5. Etc. --Kumioko (talk) 14:32, 7 September 2011 (UTC)

I'd like to think that I've retained enough composure here to see the irony in being linked to IDIDNTHEHEARTHAT in, like, the fifth reply which has stated that decoration is important in WikiProjects, portals and userspace. Y'know, the thing that I've repeatedly conceded has consensus, and that I'm not interested in.

As for "professional image", I'd like to think that one of the major drivers towards a more "professional" looking encyclopedia over the last five years has been the drive to standardisation which gave us {{infobox}}, {{navbox}}, {{ambox}} and such instead of the hand-painted tables that they replaced. So much so that even in the TfD in question nobody argued that we should still be using {{divbox}} in articlespace. It's the community parts of the project like WikiProjects and userspace which we don't need to be "professional" on, which is why I'm not pursuing standardisation there (although it's still nice to have, and I far prefer the clean look of WP:FOOTY to the more gaudy project pages personally). Chris Cunningham (user:thumperward) - talk 16:57, 7 September 2011 (UTC)

I completely agree on the standardization thing as I have also been working on this in the area of WikiProject X templates. I guess I am confused abour what your talking about then. Could you give me an example? --Kumioko (talk) 17:26, 7 September 2011 (UTC)

Here's one example, in the form of an edit notice used for the Bot approval group. Here's another, in which the box was removed from instructions for using a template. --Moonriddengirl ^(talk) 20:01, 7 September 2011 (UTC)

Further examples include {{redirects from titles without diacritics/Explanation}} (where it is used solely to add a distracting and IMO unnecessary background colour to the examples), {{blocked subject}} (which is a textbook example of something we should be using {{umbox}} for), and Wikipedia:CCIsubpage (where a regular {{mbox}} would work perfectly well; there's no compelling argument to the contrary). Chris Cunningham (user:thumperward) - talk 13:22, 8 September 2011 (UTC)

There doesn't need to be a compelling argument to the contrary. So far, there is no rule or guideline against it, and there's no consensus to change. Nothing says {{mbox}} is preferred to {{divbox}} for pages of that sort.

--Moonriddengirl ^(talk) 17:01, 9 September 2011 (UTC)

TMTOWTDI is typically considered to cause unnecessary inconsistency and thus to negatively affect both editor and user experience. That's one of the main reasons for having One True Template for any given situation. Most people have, silently or otherwise, "gotten this", which is why there are so few examples of nonstandard template use at this time. The absence of a ban on something certainly should not be taken as meaning that there's nothing wrong with it. Chris Cunningham (user:thumperward) - talk 18:14, 11 September 2011 (UTC)

I don't believe that we have a consensus against "decoration".

About the specific changes made, it does seem a little silly to say, "This template exists solely for decoration, but you shouldn't be decorating any pages anyway". Sometimes decoration is actually wanted by the community: See WP:Five pillars as a prominent example of a needlessly, but beautifully decorated page. Sometimes setting something off in a colored box helps emphasize it: See WP:3RR for a prominent use of this template to emphasize critical text. I don't think that we have a consensus against doing what we do every day. WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:44, 7 September 2011 (UTC)

It's interesting that you bring up 5P. The 5P page includes a list of definitions, but instead of being marked up using <dt><dd> pairs it simply styled the content to fake this. We should avoid doing that wherever possible. Ideally, we'd include the images using CSS: in this case the problem is that wikicode is not expressive enough to give us a semantically solid result which still looks good. While a table is used for the markup, it is unobtrusive and does not draw attention to itself, which is quite different from {{divbox}}. I don't have a problem with that sort of markup at all. Chris Cunningham (user:thumperward) - talk 13:35, 8 September 2011 (UTC)

The file commons:File:Messianic symbols.gif, which is used on a very large number of pages (links), has been marked for speedy deletion on Wikimedia Commons for the following reason: Other speedy deletions. Rather than notify a large number of talk pages I am raising this on WP:AN and WP:VP to obtain the right intervention.

What to do

Speedy deletions at commons tend to take longer than they do on Wikipedia, so there is time to respond. If you feel the deletion can be contested then please do so (commons:COM:SPEEDY has further information). Otherwise:

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A further notification will be placed if/when the image is deleted. This notification is provided by a Bot --CommonsNotificationBot (talk) 09:04, 11 September 2011 (UTC)

I think this can be ignored now. The speedy has been removed and the page marked with {{PD-ineligible}}.--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 13:30, 11 September 2011 (UTC)

Is this link reliable to know the sales of an album? --NicolásTM (talk) 17:38, 11 September 2011 (UTC)

I suggest asking that at The reliable sources noticeboard. Also, your link is not working. Yoenit (talk) 17:45, 11 September 2011 (UTC)

Yes, it work, but if i put ".net" WP will not let me because it says it is "spam".--NicolásTM (talk) 17:53, 11 September 2011 (UTC)

It's blacklisted? That means you can't use it. I have dug up the last time it was discussed: MediaWiki_talk:Spam-blacklist/archives/January_2008#worldwidealbums.net. Yoenit (talk) 18:00, 11 September 2011 (UTC)

I've just been looking for some cites to improve the current rather vestigial article Tom Harris (botanist) and I was at first delighted and then rather stunned to discover that somebody seems to have written a biography of the guy in question. You can see it for sale on what looks like a reputable Australian online bookshop here.

Only trouble is that the book is apparently based on WP, according to a prominent sticker on its cover. Nothing wrong with that, of course, it is well within our license, although it does rather rule it out as a citable source. But the book claims to be 108 pages long, whilst our article on the subject would struggle to run to 108 words. Indeed the entire WP article is reproduced as the publisher's blurb on the above bookshop's page.

So what the heck is going on here. I've looked at some of the other books produced by the apparant editors of this book, and many claim 'High quality content by Wikipedia article' while being on pretty unlikely subjects for a whole book. Is somebody selling pages of nonsense on the back of our reputation, or what?. Can we / should we do something about it. -- chris_j_wood (talk) 16:28, 6 September 2011 (UTC)

See Wikipedia:Buying Wikipedia articles in print or another form for an overview of this subject. –xeno^talk 16:56, 6 September 2011 (UTC)

You can read more about this particular imprint at VDM Publishing and User:PrimeHunter/Alphascript Publishing sells free articles as expensive books. --Moonriddengirl ^(talk) 17:17, 6 September 2011 (UTC)

Thanks for both those references, which do shed some light but don't totally address the issue I had in this case. I'm well aware that it is perfectly legal from a copyright point of view to sell a book based on a WP article provided that fact is appropriately acknowledged. And these books clearly boast on their cover that they have 'High quality content by Wikipedia article' so I don't think we have any complaint on that front.

My problem is pretty well the opposite. Somebody is claiming that their 108 page long book is based on our 5 line long article. Clearly this cannot be the case. So either there is a genuine 108 page book on the subject which is fraudulently claiming to be based on WP, or the book contains 1 page of WP content and 107 pages of something else. Either way, the very obvious cover invocation of WP is likely to bring our brand into disrepute.

Of course I could find out more by splashing out a considerable sum of money on a copy just to see what was in those 107 pages. For obvious reasons I don't want to do that if (a) other Wikipedians already know the answer or (b) or other Wikipedians already don't think that is worth taking forward. Hence my post. -- chris_j_wood (talk) 08:19, 7 September 2011 (UTC)

Look at the image of the book, especially the subtitle:paleobotanist, gardener, University of Reading, Botany. Those are also the first four wikilinks in Tom Harris (botanist). The book will contain not only his article, but also the 7 articles linked from that page and probably all the articles linked from those pages as well. Yoenit (talk) 08:32, 7 September 2011 (UTC)

Well, none of that is really our concern - you could probably email the Foundation about the branding issue but I doubt they would do anything there either. –xeno^talk 12:38, 7 September 2011 (UTC)

Brand issue passed on to the WMF Office of the General Counsel.  :) Philippe Beaudette, Wikimedia Foundation (talk) 09:50, 12 September 2011 (UTC)

If someone is suckered into buying a book based on free content, good for them. I've seen at least a dozen of such publishers in last two years. It is especially funny that there are e-books of this kind: is there really someone who is paying to read online a wikipedia-based content? Loew Galitz (talk) 16:10, 8 September 2011 (UTC)

The Arbitration Committee is seeking to appoint additional users to the CheckUser and Oversight teams. Experienced editors are invited to apply for either or both of the permissions, and current holders of either permission are also invited to apply for the other.

Successful candidates are likely to be regularly available and already familiar with local and global processes, policies, and guidelines especially those concerning CheckUser and Oversight. CheckUser candidates are expected to be technically proficient, and previous experience with OTRS is beneficial for Oversight candidates. Trusted users who frequent IRC are also encouraged to apply for either permission. All candidates must at least 18 years of age; have attained legal majority in their jurisdiction of residence; and be willing to identify to the Wikimedia Foundation prior to receiving permissions.

Current demand for users with regional knowledge

Because of the increasing activity from the South Asian, Southeast Asian, or Middle Eastern regions, CheckUser applications are particularly sought from people who not only meet our general requirements but also are familiar with the ISPs and typical editing patterns of any of these regions.

If you think you may be suitably qualified, please see the appointments page for further information. The application period is scheduled to close 18 September 2011.

For the Arbitration Committee, –xeno^talk 16:40, 12 September 2011 (UTC)

Discuss this

MOS:FLAG says: Generally, flag icons should not be used in infoboxes, even when there is a "country", "nationality" or equivalent field: they are unnecessarily distracting and give undue prominence to one field among many. Therefore, some project (e.g. WP:Energy for template:Infobox power station) have successfully implemented User:AnomieBOT to replace these flag icons with country names. I started a discussion here for using this bot also for replacing flag icons with country names for the Dam infobox. You are welcome to make your comments here. Beagel (talk) 18:24, 12 September 2011 (UTC)

Please see Talk:Serge_Gainsbourg#Continuation, whether Gainsbourg and Birkin were married. Debresser (talk) 23:37, 12 September 2011 (UTC)

Does anybody know what happened to the WP:AfD link from the Wikipedia:Community portal page? RJH (talk) 21:22, 12 September 2011 (UTC)

I added back links to AfD and PROD; they're too important not to be linked on the portal. Regards, RJH (talk) 20:21, 13 September 2011 (UTC)

Hi!

If you have worked with world maps before, please help! I want to make one. I am so confused and helpless in this part of wikipedia. I have been editing Muammar Gaddafi, and I want to put up a map of nations he's visited, warred with, tried to merge with. I have a list of nations, sourced, ready-to-go, but i don't know how to make the map. If you can help, I'm offering you a barnstar for your hard work. And please understand, Gaddafi's 40+ yrs in power have created an interesting list of nations. I think you'll find it exciting and intriguing when I share the list with you. Anyway, send me a message to my talk page and I'll send you the list of countries. I like the map of Nations visited by Pope John Paul II and I think it's a great example of what we can do. Again, thank you so much for your help!

Sincerely,

Screwball23 talk 19:52, 14 September 2011 (UTC)

You may wish to make a request at the Graphic Lab. Give em the list and you'll get your map. Pi.1415926535 (talk) 20:26, 14 September 2011 (UTC)

I think you are putting the cart before the horse here. The most important thing is the information, which, if it is reliable sourced, you can easily put in the article as text. The fancy presentation can come later. Phil Bridger (talk) 20:50, 15 September 2011 (UTC)

A few minutes ago when I started to write this posting, the article Sunday shopping showed a "view source" link and not an "edit" link, and the mouseover text said it was protected (not just semi-protected). Yet the talk page showed no discussion of this and the edit history showed no recent edit wars.

What puzzled me further was that the edit history also had no entry for a transition to protected status. And now the article no longer shows as protected anyway. So why would it have done so temporarily, for some unknown length of time?

--142.205.241.254 (talk) 22:58, 15 September 2011 (UTC)

I'm not an admin so I can't look, but if I had to guess, the edits that caused the protection were revdeleted because of whatever reason (containing personal info or whatever). ♫ Melodia Chaconne ♫ (talk) 02:06, 16 September 2011 (UTC)

There is a glitch where unregistered users sometimes see a "View source" link instead of "Edit". If it happens then you can still edit the article by clicking the View source link which has the same url as the Edit link. PrimeHunter (talk) 01:21, 16 September 2011 (UTC)

Okay, if it's an ongoing "glitch" I'll repost this at VP/T. Thanks. (Original poster, different IP address). Done now. --70.48.230.233 (talk) 05:19, 18 September 2011 (UTC)

There is a conversation at the image guideline about whether or not it is permissible for users to create covers to poetry, etc., by using public domain artworks and putting a title on them. Anyone with input is invited to add it there, please. --Moonriddengirl ^(talk) 01:15, 17 September 2011 (UTC)

Does every song/album that a writer/producer/engineer/etc. appears on deserve a mention on their bio? I'm thinking about the enormous, unsourced table at Tom Hambridge. The Mark of the Beast (talk) 01:55, 17 September 2011 (UTC)

I just noticed a huge list of "associated acts", as well. Some of this seems rather obsessive. The Mark of the Beast (talk) 02:03, 17 September 2011 (UTC)

Is it factual? Verifiable? Notable? In terms of notability, would any single one of those songs on any biography warrant mention in a similar article if that was the only song they wrote? I don't see the problem with this particular article in terms of somebody who has been extremely prolific in terms of making artistic content. If the list would be culled in some way, perhaps you could stick with "notable" songs, but in this case I don't think it would cut out too many entries in this list. I've seen extremely long filmographies for famous actors who have done a lifetime of work and other similar extremely long lists for artists who have been extremely prolific. Perhaps splitting this section off as a "list" might be in order if it overwhelms the article itself, but it doesn't deserve to be deleted. --Robert Horning (talk) 04:14, 18 September 2011 (UTC)

As customary to notify this noticeboard, I have started a request for comment for the 2011 Arbitration Committee Elections. The community is invited and encouraged to discuss the issues at hand in order to develop a rough consensus for the procedures and rules for the election in December. –MuZemike 00:36, 18 September 2011 (UTC)

I see a page on my watch list was deleted with this note in the edit summary: "Expired PROD."

So, look for what is PROD?!

It is a process that expires in seven days and then all the work that went into an article can go poof!

What a way to encourage contributions!

Not everyone lives and breathes Wikipedia. A seven day period is way too short to expect everyone concerned to notice a proposed deletion. - Ac44ck (talk) 02:39, 11 September 2011 (UTC)

Which is why it can be undeleted with a simple request (WP:REFUND). Headbomb {talk / contribs / physics / books} 02:43, 11 September 2011 (UTC)

Thanks. I didn't know about that. REFUND done. I wouldn't have done it otherwise. Many other pages probably remain deleted because others didn't know about it, were PO'd, and never came back. - Ac44ck (talk) 04:28, 11 September 2011 (UTC)

It used to be five days. Killiondude (talk) 05:37, 11 September 2011 (UTC)

It would defeat the purpose of PROD to have it take longer than AfD though. Rmhermen (talk) 17:47, 11 September 2011 (UTC)

Then maybe the AfD period is too short, too. If no interested party checks an article for a week, it can just vanish. If they don't know about WP:REFUND, it may be lost forever. Some people are not so devoted to keeping Wikipedia informed that they will happily search for and jump through the hoops needed to get an article restored. - Ac44ck (talk) 04:36, 13 September 2011 (UTC)

It would hurt to have a better edit summary for this. Perhaps a link such as "(contest this)"? If consensus agrees to add it, of course. One would only have to replace this with this for such a change. Also, the link could be added to MediaWiki:Deletereason-dropdown for the PROD summary. ^Avic_ennasis @ 20:01, 15 Elul 5771 / 20:01, 14 September 2011 (UTC)

Suggestion: A PROD-like tag for use on old articles which has a month-long period, or a tool-supported way for PRODers to specify a longer timeframe. I can understand wanting to move with haste to clean up new articles, but most of the articles I PROD have been problematic for YEARS. See for example EuroForth Conference (which is a current PROD of mine), I'd consider using a PROD of as long as six months for that article, on the off-chance that someone with the direct-knowledge to save the article stumbled across it in that time. Stuartyeates (talk) 20:14, 14 September 2011 (UTC)

Not a bad idea - perhaps we can have PRODs just be a week at minimum, with options for extended timeframes? Also, something (tool/script/bot) that could notify WikiProjects of pending PRODs might also help. There are sometimes people in a project that could expand/fixup an article, but never come across it, for whatever reason. (Some WikiProjects do have a pretty wide scope.) ^Avic_ennasis @ 20:53, 15 Elul 5771 / 20:53, 14 September 2011 (UTC)

• This thread highlights another problem, that I consider even more serious. Our deletion policies urge nominators to leave a heads-up on the article creator's talk page when they nominate the article for deletion. Some contributors, even some administrators, who should be setting an example, can't bring themselves to exercise this common courtesy. As recently as 10 months ago one admin went on record as being unwilling to ever comply with the deletion policies' recommendation to inform article creators when he or she nominated material for deletion (diff upon request). As I noted in my question to the administrator in question, our decision making is supposed to be by consensus, and when nominators don't inform those likely to disagree with them that they nominated material for deletion then those participating in the discussion are not reaching as fully informed opinion as they would be if contributors with counter arguments had been invited to voice their opinion. I suggested then, and continue to believe, those who nominate material for deletion, and act to disclude the opinions of those who disagree with deletion from the discussion, have acted to the result of the discussion is not actually a consensus.

  In my opinion informing the uploader or article creator should be essential. Relying on the watchlist is insufficient. As the original contributor pointed out, many contributors come here intermittently. Material they contributed may have been deleted longer ago than the window their watchlist shows. Only the note on the talk page provides a permanent audit trail. Even if, for the sake of argument, administrators never, ever made mistakes, and every deletion they performed was 100 % correct good faith contributors deserve that heads-up on their talk page so they can learn what they are doing wrong.

  If I am not mistaken it would be possible for the tools we use to nominate articles for deletion could be rewritten so a robot automatically informed the uploader / creator and possibly the major contributors. Even then however, I think it should remain the responsibility of the nominator to make sure the article creator / uploader is informed. Geo Swan (talk) 21:48, 14 September 2011 (UTC)

This is a separate issue, and I've got to say that I agree with the administrator you mention. Stuartyeates (talk) 22:29, 14 September 2011 (UTC)

It is a separate issue. However the system does get gamed, albeit inadvertantly, for example articles about someone's works will be deleted, then the author's page will be deleted, then the publishers, then the associated categories. This may be done by different editors, by a type of "non-notability is inherited". Also loads of stuff gets deleted because people can't be bothered to do the research. Anything that reduces this waste is good. We are no longer in the situation where, for example, if someone had deleted a relatively obscure work by Dostoevsky, we can assume it will be recreated soon, the boundaries have moved, and when we remove the work of specialists, we loose the content and probably the contributor in one go. Rich Farmbrough, 13:49, 18 September 2011 (UTC).

I created the following entries Junior (athletics) and Youth (athletics), but I have been in cancellation. Excuse me, are not practical, someone might open the discussion for their maintenance? --Casavincibus (talk) 08:23, 18 September 2011 (UTC)

I am sorry, I have no idea what you are trying to say. Do you want them to be deleted? Yoenit (talk) 11:48, 18 September 2011 (UTC)

I'm sorry that, you're sorry, but it'so simple. No I don't want that the pages will be deledet, the articles are correct, they before, had interwiki. The question is, why a man came here and say: "Short article with only a definition and description." We say in Italy: "Sticazzi!". If you really, but really want to help me, OPEN the discussion for the maintenance, manteniment, "still stay here"... --Casavincibus (talk) 15:01, 18 September 2011 (UTC)

Silly question-dead basic-should have asked thousands of edits ago.

What is the template that one adds to a page to triggers a request for reassessment? I am talking about start class articles that one has worked on and are now much more complete- but not as the GA stage. Is there a {{Reassess}} template that you can put in place of the {{cleanup}} template- does it go on the article page or the talk page? (Search the Help for Reassessment- and one just finds pages on GAs and GAR )--ClemRutter (talk) 09:22, 18 September 2011 (UTC)

There is none, assesment below GA-class is handled by individual wikiprojects. Look at the article talkpage what the relevant wikiproject(s) for the article are and then look if that wikiproject has an "assesment" section (example). Yoenit (talk) 11:42, 18 September 2011 (UTC)

Thanks:I have not gone senile just yet. This is the example that triggered the comment Chimney sweep. An article about an nineteenth century profession, child abuse, building construction. Though out of scope, it has been claimed by Wikipedia:WikiProject Home Living a project with five members with 1 FA. The only other project available is the all embracing Sociology project. Hmmm.

So- I as read. An editor tags a new article with {{WPSomeproject}} this triggers a bot to add it to the stats of that project. This is used by another bot that is triggered by {{cleanup}} to notify the project. Using this mechanism, couldn't a tool be provided that detects a {{Reassess}} and passes the information in the same direction. It also seems that there is a chasm- that could be filled by a default {{WPNoProjectAsYet}} to catch articles on the outside or margins of WikiProjects...I knew I shouldn't started asking! Suddenly sweeping chimneys seems quite a good deal! --ClemRutter (talk) 17:02, 18 September 2011 (UTC)

"They controlled the pearl fisheries along the south Indian coast" is a phrase inserted today as part of a "whole cloth" edit to Mukkulathor - suspicious of copyvio, I checked and found it used in

• 2010 Longman History & Civics ICSE 9 By Singh

• 2008 Encyclopedia of the African diaspora: origins, experiences and culture, Volume 1 By Carole Boyce Davies

Ans also in

• 2006 Wikipedia History of South India

which in turn derived from

• 2006 Wikipedia Pandyan Dynasty where we can see the sentence develop.

I have searched the (Google) books for the term "Wikipedia" and it appears that neither Dorling Kindersly nor Longmans provide attribution.

Doubtless both works would now be considered "reliable sources"!

Rich Farmbrough, 13:32, 18 September 2011 (UTC).

The file commons:File:Parc des Princes ExterieurSud.jpg, which is used on a very large number of pages (links), has been deleted on Wikimedia Commons for the following reason: Per commons:Commons:Deletion requests/File:AstraZenecaDunkerque.jpg. Rather than notify a large number of talk pages I am raising this on WP:AN and WP:VP to obtain the right intervention.

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It was used as icon for {{France-sports-venue-stub}}, I have replaced it with something else. Yoenit (talk) 21:10, 18 September 2011 (UTC)

I like the comment on the deletion request, that the building is of such unoriginality that "we should rather request the deletion of the building". Rich Farmbrough, 11:26, 19 September 2011 (UTC).

The file commons:File:VHS with red X through.PNG, which is used on a very large number of pages (links), has been marked for nominated deletion on Wikimedia Commons for the following reason: Deletion requests September 2011. Rather than notify a large number of talk pages I am raising this on WP:AN and WP:VP to obtain the right intervention.

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The deletion request has already been withdrawn. -- John of Reading (talk) 12:56, 19 September 2011 (UTC)

The article Ocular prosthesis has a list of people with artificial eyes at the end. Unfortunately, none of the listings are sourced. One would have to read through the articles to verify that the person indeed did have an artificial eye, so that a casual observer would not know which entries in the list were for real and which were added by vandals wishing to spread a rumor that John Jacob Schmidt has a glass eye. I'd like to start a project on Wikipedia to dig up sources and add citations for all the people listed in the article so we don't run afoul of BLP. Guideline & Policy Wonk (talk) 22:35, 18 September 2011 (UTC)

I've added references to the ones that I could find - and removed the ones (I think there were 3) that had no references for a prosthesis. ^Avic_ennasis @ 11:51, 22 Elul 5771 / 11:51, 21 September 2011 (UTC)

Are you allowed to link active FACs, MHACRs and PRs in your signature as a way of helping participation? The relevant policy isn't clear; I suggest the reasons will be pragmatic rather than ideological, hence the post here not VPP. I don't believe canvassing is really an issue with this sort of thing. Thoughts? Grandiose (me, talk, contribs) 09:09, 20 September 2011 (UTC)

bay laurel high school what's up with that?

Cmon folks. I created a entry on the former State Historian in Vermont and it was deleted because it was "only of local interest."

How is the Historian of a state that authored 4 books, went on to found a school that is still operating and yet later began an acting career that included a number of award-winning films,,,, how is that entry less local than a local high school? Oh yea, did I mention he went to school with 'Piers Anthony' and David Mamet? It was in there with cites and it was all wiped out as overly local.

define local interest if you please. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Koibeatu (talk • contribs) 16:21, 22 September 2011 (UTC)

Is there an AfD discussion? I can't find it. RJH (talk) 18:58, 22 September 2011 (UTC)

Maybe we can help you, Koibeatu, if you tell us what the exact name of the article is where you are having problems. --Jayron32 19:08, 22 September 2011 (UTC)

I think now that Koibeatu may mean Allen Soule: Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Allen Soule; wikibin entry. RJH (talk) —Preceding undated comment added 19:43, 23 September 2011 (UTC).

Hello everyone. I wrote a new essay called "be neutral in form". I see three main causes for neutrality disputes:

• An article about a topic that naturally attracts controversy (pseudoscience, Israel-Palestine)
• Someone adds a POV statement to an article. (Opinions masquerading as fact, a fringe theory, an unattributed viewpoint)
• An article that is neutral-in-fact, but organized to give undue weight to one aspect.

The essay focuses on the third one. I would appreciate some feedback. If you basically agree and want to add or tweak anything, go ahead. If you basically disagree, I'd ask that you raise it on the talk page so that I can address it and make it better.

Thanks everybody! Dzlife (talk) 20:03, 22 September 2011 (UTC)

Copy from the commons:Smiley.toerist (talk) 18:39, 24 September 2011 (UTC)

I recently made a trip to the Givet - charleville-Mezieres railway. It is a old railway where points are served from a central ground frame. The transmission of the lever movement is very unusual. It is not transmitted with wires but with metal bars. I have uploaded a lot of pictures: see [6]. I see categorys for points and "Levers and drives for points", however no categorys for the transmission of movement/energy?. There where lots wire transmissions with wires but I can find no pictures in the commons about it. What is the correct name for this type of system? What are the names for individual parts like the 90 degree turns based on turning axe?

How should this type of system be metaclassified? Energy transmission system? We have electric transmission, High pressure air transmission, hydraulic transmission, moving belt transmission used in old factorys. Moving wire tramsmission and what about the brake in bicycles? I make the distinction between energie and signal transmission. The signal transmission is when local power is used and energy transmission is when al energy needed for the action is transmitted centraly. Smiley.toerist (talk) 11:20, 24 September 2011 (UTC)

On things like this, I often find it useful to turn for help to an appropriate WikiProject on the English-language Wikipedia. - Jmabel ! talk 17:04, 24 September 2011 (UTC)

I suggest Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Trains --Tagishsimon (talk) 18:58, 24 September 2011 (UTC)

The file commons:File:Coffee icon.png, which is used on a very large number of pages (links), has been marked for speedy deletion on Wikimedia Commons for the following reason: Other speedy deletions. Rather than notify a large number of talk pages I am raising this on WP:AN and WP:VP to obtain the right intervention.

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The file commons:File:Flag map of Serbia.svg, which is used on a very large number of pages (links), has been marked for speedy deletion on Wikimedia Commons for the following reason: Other speedy deletions. Rather than notify a large number of talk pages I am raising this on WP:AN and WP:VP to obtain the right intervention.

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A further notification will be placed if/when the image is deleted. This notification is provided by a Bot --CommonsNotificationBot (talk) 16:52, 25 September 2011 (UTC)

The file commons:File:Armenian people.JPG, which is used on a very large number of pages (links), has been marked for nominated deletion on Wikimedia Commons for the following reason: Deletion requests September 2011. Rather than notify a large number of talk pages I am raising this on WP:AN and WP:VP to obtain the right intervention.

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This notification is provided by a Bot --CommonsNotificationBot (talk) 23:50, 26 September 2011 (UTC)

Since this is likely to be of great interest to contributors on Wikipedia, I just wanted to make sure you were aware that explorations of an "Article creation workflow" intended to help guide newcomers into more easily crafting articles that meet policies are ongoing at mw:Article creation workflow. This is an ideal time to help guide thinking there (feedback solicited at talk page), if you have input. :) --Maggie Dennis (WMF) (talk) 14:08, 27 September 2011 (UTC)

Is a year too long to wait for an explanation?

I started an article on Kyndra Rotunda, an author, Navy JAG, and college professor. Several single purpose accounts made edits that gave the appearance of trying to turn the article into a hagiography, at the cost of compliance with our policies.

I was the only one who made any attempt to discuss issues on Talk:Kyndra Rotunda.

A year ago a single purpose account, User:Florencewhite blanked the article's section on a sexual harrassment suit Rotunda initiated -- again without explanation. Yet another contributor reverted that section blanking as giving the appearance of vandalism. I agree, it gives the appearance of vandalism to me too. User:Florencewhite reverted to their section blanking.

Then something odd happened. An administrator claiming the authority of ticket:2010093010005573 left an edit summary that said before modifying the prior edit, please see ticket:2010093010005573.

In September 2010 -- a year ago -- I asked for clarification of this warning. The admin who left the warning said they weren't actually the OTRS team member who made the decision that the single purpose accounts unexplained excisions should stand. They said they would ask the OTRS team member who made the decision to explain themselves.

Well, it has been a year, and no explanation has been provided.

I'll provide a list of references that discuss the lawsuit below. I can imagine that covering the details of the sexual harrassment suit may be personally and professionally embarrassing to Ms Rotunda. I can see some contributors wondering whether the lawsuit should be covered -- because almost all the allegations were summarily dismissed. However, I would remind those contributors that it was Rotunda herself who initiated the lawsuit -- not vice versa.

As I wrote on Talk:Kyndra Rotunda I think I deserve to know whether I am putting myself at risk of administrative action if I revert the unexplained blanking of the sexual harrassment section of the article. Geo Swan (talk) 15:06, 26 September 2011 (UTC)

date	reference
2009-10-05	Ex-Clinic Director Kyndra Rotunda Sues George Mason for Sexual Harassment
2009-10-05	Ex-Professor Sues George Mason Law School for Harassment
2009-10-19	George Mason School of Law Sued for Sexual Harassment
2010-04-27	Trial Looms in Hard-Fought Law Prof Sexual Harassment Case at GMU
2010-04-28	GMU law professor faces harassment suit
2010-04-28	GMU professor seeks dismissal of woman’s suit
2010-05-18	Sex Harassment and the Truth
2010-05-24	George Mason, Law Dean Win Bench Dismissal of Rotunda Sex-Harass Suit
2010-05-24	Covington Secures Victory for George Mason University in Sexual Harassment Case
2010-05-25	(Dismissed) Lawsuit of the Day: Rotunda v. Zengerle
2010-05-25	Judge Dismisses Most of Sex Harassment Case Against George Mason Law
2010-05-25	Rotunda lawsuit dismissed, almost
2010-05-26	GMU prevails in sexual harassment case
2010-05-26	GMU sex harassment suit dismissed
2010-06-08	Rotunda Sex-Harass Suit Against George Mason Legal Clinic Exec Is Settled
2010-06-08	Update: Rotunda v. Zengerle Has Settled
2010-06-09	Settlement Reached in Suit against George Mason Law Prof
2010-06-10	George Mason Reportedly Settles Rotunda Harassment Lawsuit With No Payment of Damages

So, you did not bother to try and contact an OTRS agent yourself did you? We have a fancy Wikipedia:OTRS noticeboard now, why don't you try that. Yoenit (talk) 15:14, 26 September 2011 (UTC)

That's probably the best idea. I'm not sure if I'm allowed per OTRS policy to even publicly state who the OTRS agent was (I think not), so I'm going to err on the side of caution. Sorry I can't be of more help; if the person doesn't want to respond; that's their business. NW (Talk) 01:11, 27 September 2011 (UTC)

Also see This Comment. While waiting a year is rather long, Not having a time machine I can't say that waiting negative 14 hours is much better. --Guy Macon (talk) 01:44, 27 September 2011 (UTC)

See my reply. No offense but the individual who has implied I jumped the gun did not take the time to take a close look at the article's talk page, and did not realize that the reversion of repeated vandalism was unrelated to the questions I raised about the OTRS ticket. Geo Swan (talk) 22:11, 27 September 2011 (UTC)

Geo Swan's argument above and on his talk page seems reasonable. Could another uninvolved editor please review and revert my changes if he/she finds doing so to be appropriate? I would rather have another set of eyes look at it. Thanks! --Guy Macon (talk) 22:20, 27 September 2011 (UTC)

NW, I think you are saying policy does not require you to name the OTRS team member who made the decision to endorse Ms Rotunda's request to let the section blanking stand. Let me ask you some questions:

1. Shouldn't that OTRS team member have weighed in themselves on Talk:Kyndra Rotunda?
2. Why did you weigh in? Shouldn't we interpret this as you agreeing with and supporting the original OTRS team member's decision?
3. I've asked several times, let me ask again, so that we are very clear on this -- should I interpret the edit summary you left on 2010-09-30 as a warning that I would risk administrative measures if I restored any coverage of the sexual harrassment lawsuit Ms Rotunda initiated?
4. What point did you see in telling ordinary contributors that they had to read the OTRS ticket before thinking about restoring any of the material on the sexual harrassment lawsuit Ms Rotunda initiated, when only a very limited number of contributors are able to read that ticket?
5. I think you are suggesting the OTRS team member who made the decision has a right to remain anonymous. How would you reconcile this suggestion with the principle that, to the greatest extent possible, those in a position of trust here should make their decisions in an open and transparent manner?
6. So long as the OTRS team member who made the decision is allowed to remain anonymous, and have their decision remain unreviewed, how can I have any confidence that they didn't base their decision on the serious misconception that Ms Rotunda was the target of a (malicious) sexual harrassment lawsuit -- not the (public) initiator of a sexual harrassment lawsuit?

I have no problem with the OTRS team member remaining anonymous, provided that they are prepared to back away from the decision. I understand that OTRS team members have an obligation to be discrete. But this discretion should not be used to cover up mistakes. Geo Swan (talk) 23:07, 27 September 2011 (UTC)

Let's be clear here. There is strong reasons to question the decisions made by a member, or several members of the OTRS team.

What we had, prior to the OTRS ticket, was an article where an individual or individuals who wanted the article to be a hagiography were violating the wikipedia's policies. They were supplying quotes that did not comply with WP:NPOV and WP:RS. Quotes from the publisher's web page for a book are not independent. They should not be presented as if they were from independent reviews.

Fans of Ms Rotunda should not be allowed to remove, valid reference, neutrally written material, without explanation.

On September 30 2010 a fan of Ms Rotunda removed the section on the sexual harrassment suit Ms Rotunda initiated. Another contributor reverted that section blanking on the grounds it looked like vandalism. It looked like vandalism to me too.

The next step in this drama is the initiation of an OTRS ticket. The ticket number starts with 20100930... I think this the OTRS request came within hours of the vandalism of the article by fan or followers of Ms Rotunda was characterized as vandalism.

I regard the close timing of the reversal of the vandalism and the arrival of an OTRS request from Ms Rotunda as very strong circumstantial evidence that the individual or individuals who had been using single purpose accounts to vandalize the article either had a relationship with Ms Rotunda too close to comply with our guidelines on conflicts of interest, or that it may have been Ms Rotunda herself behind the vandalism.

As I wrote on the talk page, I strongly suspect that the OTRS team member contacted by Ms Rotunda did not realize that it was Ms Rotunda herself who initiagted the sexual harrassment lawsuit. I believe there are wikipedia contributors who would agree to suppressing coverage of a sexual harrassment lawsuit if it had been summarily dismissed, on the grounds it was embarrassing to the person who was the target of the lawsuit, who would not agree to suppress coverage because the person who initiated the lawsuit was embarrassed by the summary dismissal. Geo Swan (talk) 22:44, 27 September 2011 (UTC)

Rather than assuming bad faith and speculating based on assumptions why don't you contact somebody on OTRS and ask them to check the ticket for you. In fact I have already posted at the wp:OTRS noticeboard, so somebody should get back to you within a day or two. You waited a year already, what difference is a few days gonna make? Yoenit (talk) 22:50, 27 September 2011 (UTC)

I've left a note at the OTRS noticeboard. In a nutshell, I will try to contact the OTRS agent privately, and I have left suggestions for further handling if no response is forthcoming. --Moonriddengirl ^(talk) 12:17, 28 September 2011 (UTC)

Can someone please explain why when using Wikipedia in the last few days, Images have decided NOT to load, or do so very intermittently?

I strongly suspect my ISP is traffic shaping, but would welcome confirmation that images are NOT loading intermittently for other people.

Sfan00 IMG (talk) 08:27, 30 September 2011 (UTC)

In the article on Costa Rica there was no mention of AT&T being outsourced. I've had personal experience with speaking with Costa Ricans regarding some computer problems. I've not documentation to prove this except from personal experience. Naturally, it would take someone with more knowledge than I to confirm this. Thank you, Leeflea. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Owen7252 (talk • contribs) 06:01, 1 October 2011 (UTC)

https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Special:SpecialPages has a section on Pending Changes, even though the Pending Changes trial is over. Normally I would go to the talk page and ask whether anyone thinks the section should be removed, but SpecialPages has no talk section. Where is the proper place to ask my question? --Guy Macon (talk) 19:29, 26 September 2011 (UTC)

Right here, basically. I would oppose removal of that section because the special pages to which it links are still extant. Powers ^T 20:28, 26 September 2011 (UTC)

I have no strong feelings one way or the other, but I would note note that unless there is a huge change in the consensus about pending changes, none of those special pages will ever again have any content. (The only thing there is an error a steward made and instantly reverted.) There is no harm in leaving those special pages up in case PC ever gets revived, but do we really need to clutter a high visibility page like SpecialPages with links to a bunch of dead hibernating special pages? --Guy Macon (talk) 21:13, 26 September 2011 (UTC)

The problem is, though the community, for the time being anyway, has elected not to utilize pending changes, the software for it is still installed. I'm not sure if the relevant special page could be removed short of a developer going in and uninstalling the whole thing, which would, I think, be more trouble than it was worth.--Fyre2387 ^{(talk • contribs)} 22:00, 30 September 2011 (UTC)

I did not suggest that the special pages for Pending Changes be removed, only that they not be listed at Special pages. It appears to be possible to have a special page that is not listed on Special pages: the special pages Block Log and Wikimedia wikis are not listed on Special pages.

Related:

https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/MediaWiki_talk:Specialpage

https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/MediaWiki_talk:Specialpages-summary

Because this seems to be becoming a discussion of whether it is technically possible to remove items from this list, I am going to ask that the discussion here be limited to "should we" rather than "can we." Later I will bring the latter question up at Wikipedia:Village pump (technical). Does anyone here have a good reason why the pending changes special pages should be listed on SpecialPages? (again, this is a question about listing them on SpecialPages, not a question about deleting them) --Guy Macon (talk) 16:13, 1 October 2011 (UTC)

How come is it that whenever I type #, |, [, or ] in the search bar, in the suggestions the following symbol appears: `. Do you know why this is? Thank you! –Mnid ^{(Let's talk about it!)} 05:43, 1 October 2011 (UTC)

It doesn't happen for me. Do you mean Wikipedia's own search bar? Is it still happening for you? Are you typing one of those symbols and nothing else? By the way, your signature is breaking several points in Wikipedia:Signatures. PrimeHunter (talk) 01:01, 2 October 2011 (UTC)

Yes, yes, yes, and how? –Mnid ^{(Let's talk about it!)} 16:13, 2 October 2011 (UTC)

I'm seeing it as well - Firefox 4.0.1 - when I type one of those characters and wait a second, I see one search suggestion, and if I pick it I end up at Grave accent. Odd. (And see Wikipedia:Signatures#Transclusion of templates). -- John of Reading (talk) 19:15, 2 October 2011 (UTC)

I'm using Safari 5.1, and also, I fixed the {{User:Mnidaydwisww/sig}} problem. —mnid (talk) (c) 19:39, 2 October 2011 (UTC)

The Arbitration Committee is seeking to appoint additional users to the CheckUser and Oversight teams, and is now seeking comments from the community regarding the candidates who have volunteered for this role.

Interested parties are invited to review the appointments page containing the nomination statements supplied by the candidates and their answers to a few standard questions. Community members may also pose additional questions and submit comments about the candidates on the individual nomination subpages or privately via email to arbcom-en-blists.wikimedia.org.

Following the consultation phase, the committee will take into account the answers provided by the candidates to the questions and the comments offered by the community (both publicly and privately) along with all other relevant factors before making a final decision regarding appointments.

The consultation phase is scheduled to end 23:59, 4 October 2011 (UTC), and the appointments are scheduled to be announced by 10 October 2011.

For the Arbitration Committee, –xeno^talk 14:00, 26 September 2011 (UTC)

Discuss this

I didn't know where else to put this, but I just had to share it somewhere. You know that Books LLC outfit that creates POD compilations of Wikipedia articles and tries to sell them for exorbitant prices? Well, how about this one? Makes you want to immediately fork over $104.62 for what's undoubtedly a model of scholarship, doesn't it? (No one knows what the strelitzia symbolizes.) Deor (talk) 20:13, 3 October 2011 (UTC)

Sadly not available. But wait: "Purchase includes free access to book updates online and a free trial membership in the publisher's book club where you can select from more than a million books without charge." ---— Gadget850 (Ed) ^talk 21:50, 3 October 2011 (UTC)

Thank you for posting that! A few times now, when investigating articles listed at AFD for lacking notability, I have found a seemingly highly relevant book. It then has turned out the WP article itself has been published by this outfit. They value us more highly than we value ourselves. And charge more too. Thincat (talk) 21:56, 3 October 2011 (UTC)

Oh jesus... that is awesome! Resolute 22:23, 3 October 2011 (UTC)

What is less funny is that What links here for Books LLC shows it is being used as a source in several articles. ---— Gadget850 (Ed) ^talk 23:04, 3 October 2011 (UTC)

They do, apparently, also reprint old public-domain books; the incoming links through the General Books LLC redirect (at least the several I checked) seem to be for some of those. Their WP-derived books appear to consist of all the articles in individual WP categories, using the category names as titles. But maintenance categories . . . ? Deor (talk) 04:06, 4 October 2011 (UTC)

I wonder whether they realize that they could be exposing themselves to the same legal detriments that our policies are designed to protect us against - and without the protections of the DMCA, since they are selling books in print. bd2412 T 23:26, 3 October 2011 (UTC)

Oh, that's quite amusing. Thanks for sharing! Armadillopteryx^talk 01:24, 4 October 2011 (UTC)

Here's another one. Oooh... and it's on sale. But, another flower on the cover? Chris857 (talk) 02:28, 5 October 2011 (UTC)

Looking further, there is a total of 5, but I do not understand their pricing structure. Chris857 (talk) 02:32, 5 October 2011 (UTC)

Given that the material they are selling is more or less worthless, there can't be a rational 'pricing structure' - and I suspect that the very arbitrariness of it may give it the air of credibility. By and large, people expect the price of books to reflect their value - if the publisher priced according to number of pages (the only parameter remotely linked to the cost of production) people might very well catch on that the content was valueless. The most rational pricing strategy (from the publisher's point of view) is an entirely arbitrary one. No doubt this will be problematic for some economists... AndyTheGrump (talk) 02:46, 5 October 2011 (UTC)

Someone can looking for Oreodaphne and Ocotea?

Hola, the genus Oreodaphne includes Oreodaphne californica and Oreodaphne foetens, but maybe this was an older time. Could someone fix it?

Does Oreodaphne genus now included in Ocotea genus? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 95.120.185.55 (talk) 05:53, 5 October 2011 (UTC)

Sonia Murillo Perales (talk) 18:22, 4 October 2011 (UTC)

The clock isn't showing up in the top, links in reference sections are red-violet, and HotCat isn't working. What's up? Ten Pound Hammer • ^{(What did I screw up now?)} 02:30, 5 October 2011 (UTC)

The site always goes all to hell when the devs roll out a new "improved" version of the MediaWiki software. Most of the stuff will probably be fixed before long (although there are still some features I liked that haven't worked since the last rollout.) Deor (talk) 02:36, 5 October 2011 (UTC)

I also have noticed the pages refreshing unusually, and errors by IE8 that it couldn't restore the page. Chris857 (talk) 02:40, 5 October 2011 (UTC)

Hi, I'd like to create the article Robert Frascino. I had just begun to do this when I saw that a page with this name was deleted back in 2005. I left a message on the talk page of the administrator who deleted the page, but after I looked at his contributions, it became apparent that he doesn't check Wikipedia much anymore. How can I find out what the content of the original page was? The article I want to create will be a biography (but not a BLP), and I have third-party reliable sources (two local California newspapers, two organizations' websites, and an obituary to be used only for statistical information) to reference the article. All I can see from the redlink is that the original article was a copyvio, but I don't know whether that was the only problem. Can an admin please check and tell me if it's all right to create an article in that space? Thank you, Armadillopteryx^talk 02:36, 3 October 2011 (UTC)

Even without seeing the deleted article, it's easily possible to say that it is fine to start an article so long as it meets Wikipedia:Notability (people). Clearly, if you do not establish notability then there'll be problems. I cannot see that the 2005 deleted article would have any bearing at all on your proposed article. Time to be bold. --Tagishsimon (talk) 12:08, 3 October 2011 (UTC)

I agree, create the article. The deleted article is about an allergy/immunology doctor who has an Aids foundation named after him. If it is the same person he appears on first glance to probably be notable. Make sure the sources are reliable and provide significant coverage. GB fan 12:22, 3 October 2011 (UTC)

The original article was deleted because it was a copyright violation. As long as you write an original article, I see no issue. -- Derek Ross | Talk 20:24, 3 October 2011 (UTC)

Thanks to all of you :) I've gone ahead and created the article and will continue to expand it as the week goes on. Armadillopteryx^talk 01:22, 4 October 2011 (UTC)

This brings up a hobby-horse of mine. On many talk pages, there is a lot of senseless garbage that stays visible. On the other hand, articles that are erased are so thoroughly expunged that even the record of their having been created is removed from the creator's personal history page. (Granted, though: there is apparently a vault, though, where cognescenti can find the original content. -Armadillopterzx could try to find and look in this vault.) Kdammers (talk) 02:08, 7 October 2011 (UTC)

I've been using the "random article" button for a few weeks now, and it's amazing how many Wikipedia articles exist regarding these three subjects. Is there a way of figuring out what percentage of Wikipedia articles is devoted to these three subjects? Anyway, I'm not being critical.Anythingyouwant (talk) 11:58, 3 October 2011 (UTC)

You could find a common Category and see how many articles are in the Category. Here is the Category:Main Belt asteroids. It has 16,657 articles directly in the category and also has 45 sub categories. Each one of the sub-categories tells you how many articles are there. You should be able to do something similar for the other two also. GB fan 12:15, 3 October 2011 (UTC)

Yup. But is there a tool for counting total articles in a category and all subcategories? --Tagishsimon (talk) 12:19, 3 October 2011 (UTC)

I ran CatScan with the "depth search" set to two, and got a list of 17828 main belt asteroid articles. -- John of Reading (talk) 12:26, 3 October 2011 (UTC)

I ran Autowikibrowser on the category with the recursive setting and got a list of 85996 pages. GB fan 12:30, 3 October 2011 (UTC)

Looking at the AWB manual that is probably not very accurate. If a page is in a category and a sub-category, it will count it twice on the list. GB fan 12:40, 3 October 2011 (UTC)

Hey, thanks for the quick replies and the useful info. Using catscan, I find over 8000 articles for railway stations in Japan. So I guess there's several asteroid articles for each Japanese railway article, but still plenty of both.Anythingyouwant (talk) 13:10, 3 October 2011 (UTC)

Using AWB with both "Remove duplicates" and "Remove non-main space" ticked I got 17828, which I find reassuring. -- John of Reading (talk) 15:00, 3 October 2011 (UTC)

You're looking for Category Count. --Matthiasb (talk) 12:29, 5 October 2011 (UTC)

Look at http://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Comunicato_4_ottobre_2011, i'm really sorry :-( Sara --Wankel77 (talk) 19:19, 4 October 2011 (UTC) —

I may be wrong, but isn't any adherence to local laws a mere courtesy? The Wikimedia servers are located in Florida, not Italy, and thus I'm not sure why the Italian Wikipedia would be within Italy's jurisdiction. Even if there were ones in Europe, I think[?] they're in the Netherlands, not Italy. Even if the entire EU has to care, that still doesn't include Florida... --Golbez (talk) 19:38, 4 October 2011 (UTC)

I don't know how accurate that page is in its description of this proposed legislation and its potential effects, but we can't completely ignore it. Although the servers are in Florida, editors are still bound by the law of the jurisdiction from which they are editing, so (again, if this is more than just scaremongering) such legislation could be damaging to Wikipedia. Phil Bridger (talk) 20:28, 4 October 2011 (UTC)

These Google Loses a Round in Italian Court: and Google Executives Face Jail Time for Italian Video are examples of Italian jurisdiction actions against web sites having server outside Italy. here you can read the explanation of the block from italian wikipedians against the approval of the new law. --Bramfab (talk) 21:17, 4 October 2011 (UTC)

The paragraph 29 of the bill says that everyone has the right to ask for a correction in a pubblication (newspaper, website and so on) if he thinks the contents are defamatory, without a third party evaluation (some details here). The correction must be publicated within 48 hours. The proposed law has many potentially dangerous effects. Although the website is located outside of Italy, Italian users would be exposed to legal actions (sysop and check-user in particular, although they have no legal responsibility). The reason of a such absurd bill are political, I prefer to avoid this details in order to mantain NPOV. --Tino 032 (talk) 21:25, 4 October 2011 (UTC)

Ah, Italy, once again I have to be ashamed of the country of my ancestors. But there is nothing really we can do about it here and it was raised at foundation-l today. Hopefully the Italian legislators come to their senses and we can avoid this. Regards SoWhy 21:28, 4 October 2011 (UTC)

Actually as Italian I often say that heaven would be Italy without its politicians (and a lot of their voters) -- SERGIO aka the Black Cat 21:42, 4 October 2011 (UTC)

This looks like it might be a problem. I understand the basics of this law, which is essentially something like the DMCA take-down notice in America, but it applies to slander and "misrepresentation of facts" on top of copyright infringement. I don't know if OTRS might get involved with this one, or a similar group participating with it.wikipedia, but it does change the nature of Wikipedia with Italian participants.

It does seem heavy handed to require non-Italians using servers located and operated in other countries to conform with this policy, and theoretically this law might apply to en.wikipedia as well... at least in regards to anything about Italy or for that matter anybody who might take up a case with the Italian court system... and possibly anybody in the European Union.

If there is somebody who could offer expert legal advise on this issue on a (hopefully) pro bono basis, it would be greatly appreciated. Somebody familiar with Italian law would be even better. I certainly don't understand why the entirety of it.wikipedia has been shut down altogether. Is this an official action by the WMF board of trustees? --Robert Horning (talk) 21:38, 4 October 2011 (UTC)

Actually no, Robert. It was a debated action taken by the Italian-speaking community. Better said, by the Italian wikipedians, who are most likely to be affected by the possible approving of such act (which hasn't been approved yet). Many of us suggested that only biographies of Italian living people should be obscured or at least darkened with a disclaimer that warned of the possible consequences of misuse of the Paragraph 29. But the consensus was for obscuring the whole site. -- SERGIO aka the Black Cat 21:48, 4 October 2011 (UTC)

This is setting an interesting precedent of what the community can do to the site. We've had consensus around here to blackout the fundraising banners before... — Dispenser 00:23, 5 October 2011 (UTC)

I think it is safe to say that the WMF has a much better idea of what is going on at en than any other language Wikipedia. That a smaller project was able to take this step does not mean we could expect to be supported in doing something similar here. Resolute 00:31, 5 October 2011 (UTC)

The WMF should treat the English Wikipedia the same as any other WP, regardless of language issues. And the Italian WP is not that small, it ranks No. 4 world wide. S_peakF_ree ^(talk) 01:41, 5 October 2011 (UTC)

Statement on the WMF blog. the wub "?!" 01:18, 5 October 2011 (UTC)

I can only say "Wow". I know Foundation-l is burning up right now over this issue, and I can't imagine what might motivate the en.wp community to do something like this, but for those on the Italian language side: Go for it. Apparently it is just 24 hours of "blackout", but hopefully many have been able to receive the message in Italy. --Robert Horning (talk) 01:48, 5 October 2011 (UTC)

BTW, you can still view the Italian wikipedia if you disable Javascript and use your own style instead. All pages I tried appear to be locked for editing though. -84user (talk) 01:45, 5 October 2011 (UTC)

But why in the world did they decide to shut down the entire Italian-language (and not just Italian) Wikipedia, instead of just making it inaccessible from Italy?!--Ultimate Destiny (talk) 03:47, 5 October 2011 (UTC)

Because they didn't have the ability to only make it inaccessible from Italy. --Carnildo (talk) 00:45, 7 October 2011 (UTC)

Many thanks to all for your interest. Yes, it seems a temporary black out; I think it could help to imagine what will happen if this law will be approved, even if I suppose the problem will affect mostly "biographies of Italian living people" as Blackcat wrote. Many Italian people can read and understand e.g. English language, but many don't, so it will be difficult for these ones interact with en.wikipedia.org. I encourage curiosity, and Wikipedia is a great way to gain information about everything: it seems that this law is going to throw a monkey wrench instead of helping the improving of knowledge. Sara --Wankel77 (talk) 06:15, 5 October 2011 (UTC)

Please have a wider view and carry out a deeper analysis: it is not related only to "biographies of Italian living people": first let me add that could happens to the biographies of Obama or Putin or Chavez o any Chinese political dissident in the Italian version, by a simple mandatory request from the related ambassador in Rome, based only on his discretion according to statement of the "Comma 29", this is the true point of discussion. But also this law can influence any article related to subjects as Companies (when its description does not meet the wish of the public relation responsible of the company), to commercial products (as model of cars, phones, CDs) , tourist sites (if the description is not appealing to the local tourist office) and so on. This is the reason for the temporary (at present) black out. No political involvement, just protecting the neutrality of articles against mandatory Not NPOV edits --Bramfab (talk) 07:27, 5 October 2011 (UTC)

You're absolutely right. Hope this law won't be approved. Sara -- Wankel77 (talk) 07:59, 5 October 2011 (UTC)

I can't agree more. If this happens it may the end of free speech S.I. Oliantigna (talk) 13:55, 5 October 2011 (UTC)

I'm not a lawyer, and yet I have already noticed a very grave logical flaw in the project. Let's imagine this headline: "Jack Johnson discusses with John Jackson about the great polemic issue, and both of them accuse the other of having a conflict of interest in it". Either here in wikipedia or in the common press, it's easy to describe the dispute, attributing the opinions and accusations to the ones formulating them. Then, Jack Johnson comes and demands, based in this law, that the article is rewritten in his own perspective, as anything else would be "defamatory" (no third party impartial intervention leads to that). And then, John Jackson comes and demands that the article is rewritten, in exactly the opposite way. And then?

I guess you simply wouldn't be allowed to mention that particular Johnson–Jackson spat (which could actually be rather convenient for some...).--MistyMorn (talk) 17:33, 5 October 2011 (UTC)

There are two options here. One, Italian politicians realize the thing they are proposing and reformulate the project to something more realistic. Then, Italian wikipedia is restored. Or the second, the project is approved, Italy gets down into anarchy and mayhem, until they are forced to go back and derogate the law and return everything to normal. And then, we restore the italian wikipedia, which would be hidden (but not deleted) in the meantime.

In any case, it would be helpful to have an article about this bill project, to understand well what is it really about Cambalachero (talk) 15:53, 5 October 2011 (UTC)

The issue at hand at the moment is what would the contributors to Wikipedia (in any language) who happen to be Italian citizens living in Italy be able to do if this law passes, and how should their edits be treated? I think volunteers on the English language edition of Wikipedia would likely tell an Italian court to get lost, but if that volunteer happens to live in Italy, their life could get interesting if they are an administrator or bureaucrat.

Yes, concerns have been raised in the Italian press regarding the legal possibility that registered Wikipedia users who are Italian citizens/residents might be held individually responsible for challenged contributions, if not reverted within 48 hours. Were this indeed the case, a corollary would be that the proposed legislation might theoretically affect Wikipedia in languages other than Italian: while this seems a fairly far fetched scenario, I've learned from experience not to take anything for granted. Italian citizens/residents could scarcely tell an Italian court that it had no jurisdiction. Furthermore, as noted above, Google has already been held to account by Italian courts for not having deleted incriminated videos on YouTube.--MistyMorn (talk) 16:41, 5 October 2011 (UTC)

Note: I was wrong in thinking that Wikipedia is a 'registered' site: apparently that term applies to the press etc but not open community initiatives like Wikipedia.--MistyMorn (talk) 11:43, 6 October 2011 (UTC)

It isn't like we haven't been dealing with this issue already, as a contributor to Wikipedia editing Tiananmen Square protests of 1989 could very likely end up in prison if they happen to be a Chinese citizen living in China. Certainly the problems of zh.wp have been almost legendary, particularly with the Chinese version of this article.

We need to stick to our guns here and maintain the basic pillars of Wikipedia. In particular, we need to support our fellow editors who are under attack in other countries if their ability to edit or contribute is under assault. I certainly am glad that the WMF made a stand here, and I hope that the ordinary Italian citizens realize what is at stake here for their culture and society if this law passes. We didn't cave on the issue of the Chinese Wikipedia (even if the contents of the articles in Chinese are somewhat muted), and we shouldn't cave here. --Robert Horning (talk) 16:09, 5 October 2011 (UTC)

"if that volunteer happens to live in Italy, their life could get interesting if they are an administrator or bureaucrat."

I'm pretty sure that something similar already happened at least once in the past, the Italian wikipedia page of Roberto Fiore was completely blanked for fear of legal repercussions long before the rest of it.wiki was.--Ultimate Destiny (talk) 16:15, 5 October 2011 (UTC)

While it is to be hoped that the proposed legislation will not make it through parliament, that outcome can by no means be taken for granted. So I think Italian wikipedians have done well to draw attention to this very real threat, and I'm glad the WikiMedia Foundation have supported their action.--MistyMorn (talk) 16:53, 5 October 2011 (UTC)

If it becomes the law, then it's the law.

But to my knowledge there's nothing to stop us demanding that applications be made in person, to ensure that mistaken identity doesn't cause us to publish defamatory material through fear of the consequences of not doing so. There's nothing stopping us from deciding that these applications must be made in San Francisco, where a significant number of WMF staff are based. Additionally, as things stand these modifications must be made without comment. The foundation would therefore have no way of communicating to the rest of us when one of these things had been enforced. Under those circumstances, it would be impossible to stop a completely uninvolved editor from subsequently reverting. —WFC— 18:22, 5 October 2011 (UTC)

I've just read some news... "Il comma 29 che aveva fatto temere la trasformazione dell'internet italiana in un campo minato, nel quale ogni informazione pubblicata online, documentata o meno, poteva diventare oggetto di una richiesta di rettifica con pene stratosferiche per gli inadempienti è stato abbandonato in commissione, grazie all'intervento degli onorevoli Roberto Cassinelli, Pdl, e Roberto Zaccaria". It seems that nothing will change! Sorry but my English is not strong, is there any Italian that could translate? many thanks! Sara Wankel77 (talk) 19:36, 5 October 2011 (UTC)

The jist of it. —WFC— 19:47, 5 October 2011 (UTC)

Manual translation: "Paragraph 29, which raised fears that the Italian internet would become a minefield where every piece of information published online—whether documentable or not—could become a target for rectification, with hefty punishments being meted out to anyone failing to comply, has been abandoned at the Committee stage thanks to the intervention of the Rt Hon Roberto Cassinelli (Pdl) and Roberto Zaccaria."--MistyMorn (talk) 19:47, 5 October 2011 (UTC)

Unfortunately the news doesn't seem to be so encouraging as far as Wikipedia is concerned. It seems that the retraction currently only regards blogs rather than registered sites such as WP. Source, La Stampa [7]: "Unica nota positiva, come commenta Roberto Rao (Udc), è il sì bipartisan alla modifica della norma 'ammazza-blog': avranno l’obbligo di rettifica entro le 48 ore solo i siti registrati." ("The only positive note, as Roberto Rao (Udc) comments, was the bipartisan agreement to change the 'blog-killer' norm: only registered websites will be required to publish 'corrections' within 48 hours".) Of course, a lot more could change before the final votes in the two houses. [Copied from duplicated section below. Could people kindly keep their posts to the original section here? Thank you.]--MistyMorn (talk) 21:46, 5 October 2011 (UTC)

Hi dear Kolleagues. As you perhaps know the Italian Wikipedia is completely blocked by the community . Here you can see that german wikipedians did address their solidarity with the italian community. de:Wikipedia:Solidaritätserklärung_mit_dem_italienischen_Wikipedia-Streik. We invite you to participate in our solidary adress or would encourage you to initiate another solidarity adress in your own. Greetings -- Andreas Werle (talk) 19:58, 5 October 2011 (UTC)

Hello. I am from the French Wikipedia and I wanted to let you know that I do not support what is going on currently on the Italian Wikipedia. We have been struggling for more than ten years now in order to appear as a neutral encyclopedia. By taking part in a political debate in such a massive way, I feel that they have just spoiled it all and that they should be ashamed for such a move. Thierry Caro (talk) 20:38, 5 October 2011 (UTC)

You'll find yourself in a minority. The IT.wikipedia would be untenable under such a law. Better to let them know that in advance than afterthe event. --Tagishsimon (talk) 20:41, 5 October 2011 (UTC)

I can see where Thierry is coming from but I suspect that, perhaps due to limited familiarity with the particular Italian context, he may not have fully grasped the implications of the proposed legislation from a specific civil rights (and non-party political) perspective, and the direct effects it threatens to exert on Wikipedia in Italian and other languages. I think that the generally non-political tone of comments on this page—and especially on the message posted on the it.wp front page—provides some indication of how careful people have been not to let the question slide into political debate. Just my 2 centesimi.--MistyMorn (talk) 21:19, 5 October 2011 (UTC)

This whole business could not have been handled worse. The it.wikipedians acted in a rash and theatrical way, without seeking opinions/advices beforehand from wikimedia or the other wikis. On top of that, they don't appear to understand the law proposal any better than we do, which shows from all the mistakes in the interpretation of the law in the manifesto that were redacted well after it went up and were widely cited by the Italian press. I just hope that it was just a carnevalata that got out of hand, and that everything will be back to normal soon.--Ultimate Destiny (talk) 21:25, 5 October 2011 (UTC)

I have the impression our Italian colleages are overdramatizing the effects of that law a bit. This law about the right to "rettifica" looks pretty much like our law about "Gegendarstellung" in Germany. It's been around for ages, and the only thing that's being discussed now is to what extent it should be extended from print periodicals to websites. It's been applied to websites in Germany too, at least to some, and that certainly hasn't brought the German Wikipedia down. I'm not sure, maybe there's some fiendish difference in the small print that makes the Italian version more problematic, but if Italian "rettifiche" are anything like our German "Gegendarstellungen", they would hardly affect work in practice. It's not as if these things are a license for the "offended" party to take down an article, whitewash it, or demand that a rewritten article of their choice must be presented instead of the old one. These things are a very strictly limited instrument and must stick to very narrow rules; for instance, they must apply to specific, identifiable claims of fact; they can't contain objections to mere statements of opinion, or of perceived editorial slant etc. It works like this: If I publish a statement that "Prime Minister Burloscotti has a habit of eating little babies at midnight", Mr Burloscotti can demand that I publish a statement of the form "In the Wikipedia article soandso, it was claimed that I eat little babies at midnight. This is untrue. The truth is that I am always asleep at midnight, and have never eaten a baby at that time of day." Which basically means that it's a very ineffective way for somebody to try to gloss over an inconvenient fact, because the very instrument of the "Gegendarstellung" forces them to direct the reader's attention to the disputed fact yet again (making sure he'll be hit hard by the Streisand effect). That's probably the reason why, in my experience, this instrument is actually quite rarely used in practice, at least here in Germany; it's certainly not the case that newspapers that publish controversial political opinion are inundated by these things on a daily basis. It also means that a statement that is properly hedged and attributed, as potentially contentious statements should be on Wikipedia, are almost unassailable by this mechanism (it doesn't make sense to demand a "Gegendarstellung" of the form "In the Wikipedia article soandso, it was claimed that journalist X of newspaper Y has suggested that I eat little babies at midnight. This is untrue. The truth is that journalist X of newspaper Y never said … oh wait, he did? Well, uh, nevermind …"). Fut.Perf. ☼ 21:25, 5 October 2011 (UTC)

My understanding is that the situation is indeed quite different in Italy. From what I've read it would be enough for Sig. Tizio to say that he finds a reference to his truly Rabelaisian eating habits personally offends his dignity to demand that it be removed. Maybe I've missed something and maybe it wouldn't work quite like that in practice, but that seems to be pretty much the gist of the proposal as it stands. Since Italy is already full of legal actions for slander of myriad varieties, on paper the proposal seems a major concern. Whether it will pass in its present form is another question. I don't really think the Italian government will want to be seen to be alienating internationally esteemed organizations like Wikipedia. And I think it would be extremely embarrassing for them to invite comparisons with countries like China as far as freedom of speech is concerned. Moreover, the governing coalition is extremely fragile and similar legislation has been retracted in the past. So, I guess we'll just have to wait and see what happens.--MistyMorn (talk) 22:02, 5 October 2011 (UTC)

From the text of the law I've read (you need to look at the original law from 1948, not the draft amendment that's now debated and linked to from the it-wiki page, because the amendment text doesn't contain those parts of the law that remain unchanged and where the basic definition of the "rettifica" is given), it certainly doesn't seem to involve a right to demand the removal of content. The wording is almost identical with the German law. Fut.Perf. ☼ 23:13, 5 October 2011 (UTC)

You may be right, but Italy isn't Germany and the workings of the Italian legal system are, in some ways, a law unto themselves. My guess is that a lot would depend on how particular judges elect to interpret the new version of the law.--MistyMorn (talk) 08:57, 6 October 2011 (UTC)

Wikipedia is considered a registered site (isn't it or am I wrong?), so this law will apply (even if i'm a bit confused as I told in the next post about the Italian Wikipedia). I don't know what will happen, hope it won't be the end of a free and respected thinking. Sara Wankel77 (talk) 06:14, 6 October 2011 (UTC)

I don't understand why the blanking of Wik-Ital wasn't brought before the general Wik community (at least in terms of informing us) before it was taken. Who actually made the decision? I only found out about it because I happen to have "Editing Wikipedia" on my watchlist.Kdammers (talk) 06:24, 6 October 2011 (UTC)

I don't know, such important decisions should be taken asking the opinion of the community (a community is a community). BTW (as wrote by 84user) you can still read Italian Wikipedia if you disable Javascript... for now. News in Italian sites are not encouraging. Sara Wankel77 (talk) 07:57, 6 October 2011 (UTC)

The it.wp front page now has a box at the top remarking that the Italian blackout has received considerable media coverage and that some political figures intend to present amendments to protect Wikipedia from having to comply to the proposed change in the law. They also say that the blackout will remain in place at least until the debate in the lower House (Camera), which is scheduled for today, 6 October.--MistyMorn (talk) 08:47, 6 October 2011 (UTC)

@Sara: Wikipedia is not considered a "registered publication according to art. 5 of the the 1948 law on press". It applies only to newspapers or magazines that have registered their responsible person at the "tribunale". --bala^biot 09:08, 6 October 2011 (UTC)

Thanks :-) So in theory the law won't apply? Sara Wankel77 (talk) 09:26, 6 October 2011 (UTC)

There's an interview with Jimbo in Italian on Vaniglia in which he explains why he supports the Italian action, especially given the difficulties in Italy of effectively getting one's voice heard across the national media. He confirms the opinion he expressed on Twitter that the proposed change to the law is idiotic. He says that the proposed amendment excluding 'unregistered' sites from the legislation is a victory for Wikipedia but still a blow to the press and free speech. Finally, he underlines his view that the question of freedom of expression does not just regard Italy, but the entire world—"All governments are warned: we citizens of the world are here to stay and you'll never again be able to silence us".--MistyMorn (talk) 11:38, 6 October 2011 (UTC)

• It seem to me that perhaps one way to deal with this is the way that D notices were discredited in Britain in the 1960s. D notices were notices put out by the British Government requesting that a particular subject was not reported in the press. Some of the more scurrilous weeklies started to publish the D notices. In this case there is a difference between publishing "within 48 hours of the request and without any comment, a correction of any content that the applicant deems detrimental to his/her image." and making a correction. A section at the bottom of an article page called "Published requests for correction without any comment" listing verbatim the request is likely to be more detrimental to the reputation of the person making the request than the content of a BLP which is within the current Wikipedia BLP rules. -- PBS (talk) 06:11, 7 October 2011 (UTC)