User talk:Bielle/Archives/2010/February

Finding admins

Yes, there are a few ways of telling. Firstly their user page will have the text Category: Wikipedia administrators listed at the bottom and one of the following logos at the top right: You should also find them at Wikipedia:List of administrators and you can see the record of their promotion at Wikipedia:Requests for adminship/THEIRUSERNAME, e.g. mine is at: Wikipedia:Requests for adminship/Rockpocket. For historical reasons, not every admin will fulfill all of these criteria, but if they have none of them, they are most likely not an admin.

I'm not aware of any specific guideline or policy that explicitly states an administrator has to tell you the truth if you ask. Though I would expect them to do so unless that had a very good reason to lie (and I can't think of any such justifiable reason at the moment). It may be a case that whether they are an admin is not irrelevent to a discussion (i.e. in content disputes, when admins have no authority), but if someone asked, they really should be open and honest. Has this happened to you recently? Rockpocket

Edit conflicts

Yes, Bielle, what this shows is that great minds really do think alike. I'm stunned that this person really thought we'd be so stupid as to believe his/her "It's not homework, I just made up these questions out of idle curiosity" line. And I'm stunned that a person who thinks like this, and writes so execrably, can seriously be studying such questions as the Avignonese papacy. But these days I get stunned quite a lot with all the crap that passes for decent language and thought. I've become just like my parents - "what's the matter with the younger generation?". Cheers.  :) JackofOz

PS. The way to link to a specific question on the Humanities Ref Desk page, say the one in question, is [[Wikipedia:Reference desk/Humanities#Middle ages]]. Be sure to use exactly the same case as in the question heading, as the software is case-sensitive :) JackofOz

It seems we're in a diminishing band of diehards who believe that spelling, grammar and punctuation really do matter. The philosophy now seems to be that, as long as one can get the basic meaning across, it doesn't really matter how one does it. One should not be a prescriptivist but a descriptivist. I don't like such labels, and I try to be neither - but surely there's a basic standard that professors should make it their business to uphold. Maybe our parents' generation were too strict, and we're now experiencing a generational anti-reaction. I can understand that, and I can accept that some flexibility is ok. But, dammit, they've gone too far and they must be stopped at all costs before we're all doomed !!! (end of rant). JackofOz

Three questions

Hello Bielle. Thanks for your question on my talk page. All were things that I have puzzled over myself at various times. I'm not sure I have definitive answers for you but I will do my best.

1. Wikipedia should, ideally, be something to everyone. Our best articles should provide information with tone and context suitable for the inquisitive layman of average intelligence to understand the basics, but also provide a summary of expert-level analysis in an accessible form. This is pretty difficult to do though, the major problem being technical experts tend to write expert-level articles and laymen tend to write layman level articles, and so you get two classes of article. The former is over-represented in the hard sciences and the latter over-represented in popular culture. I wrote an article, on chromatophores, and spent a long time trying to balance content and tone for expert and the layman. I don't know if it was successful or not, though it did make it to featured article status. I think what we should be aiming for is best summarised at WP:TONE#Information style and tone and WP:TONE#Provide context for the reader. Also, if you find a technical article unfathomable, you could always see if we have a Simple English Wikipedia article on the subject!
2. Schools. Great question. This is something I have never understood either. There appears to be two major "schools" of thought: thats schools are inheritably notable (and thus an article can exist for every school) or that schools are not notable and thus need to meet certain notability criteria (and then hundreds of opinions on what those criteria should be). I think the reason this debate continues to rage is because the latter appears logical in terms of fitting in with our core policies, but is near impossible to enforce. Whenever a kid logs on to Wikipedia for the first time, they tend to do one of three things 1) write "you suck" somewhere 2) write and article about themselves, 3) write an article about their school. School articles get created quicker than they can be deleted and its not clear if they should be speedy deleted per WP:CSD. Therefore they usually go to AfD and the different opinions fight it out there, again... and again... and again. To be honest, I don't know what the current state of play is with regards to policy. There has been at least three attempts to get consensus for a guideline on school notability, see here, here and here - none of them are currently active. I think the current consensus, for what its worth, is summarised best at Wikipedia talk:Schools#State of consensus to date.
3. Ah. The infamous picture uploading instructions. This is the part of Wikipedia I found most difficult to grasp. Its actually quite simple really, it just appears to be really difficult. I think the reason for this is because this is where 90% of our copyright violation problems come from, so they make it a challenge on purpose to stop people uploading pictures they find on the web! There is a useful tutorial for using images in articles at Wikipedia:Picture tutorial and the most simple instructions for uploading is at Wikipedia:Uploading images#Mini HowTo. However, the best way to learn is to try it. If you have an image you would like to upload, let me know what it is, where you got it from and I can talk you through it, what license you need and what info you need to provide during the upload. Rockpocket

Talking back with great delay

[1] ---Sluzzelin talk 12:43, 16 February 2010 (UTC)