Wikipedia:Village pump (miscellaneous)/Archive 44

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Village pump (miscellaneous) archive  

This page contains discussions that have been archived from Village pump (miscellaneous).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

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New Video Game Sub-Genre

There ought to be a new sub-genre to further specify Shoot 'em ups (specifically vertical scrolling and multidirectional). Certain video games often have projectiles firing in a straight line and hitting targets no matter what altitude, but others can do air-to-air, air-to-ground and ground-to-air attacks, by doing specific actions. I would title that as a "Depth Genre" to indicate how many altitudes are. The types of depth would be:

• "Single-Depth" such as Space Invaders, Major Stryker and Xevious
• "Double-Depth" such as Alpha Mission II, Zone 66 and Strike series

There might be games with Multi-Depth but I can't quite think of an example. If this suggestion sounds sensible to add information to the Shoot 'em up article and add information on the infoboxes of video game articles related to Shoot 'em ups, I'm happy to implement it. Deltasim (talk) 19:13, 24 September 2013 (UTC)

No, there shouldn't be a 'new sub-genre'. That would be original research. AndyTheGrump (talk) 19:19, 24 September 2013 (UTC)

Agree with Andy. It's original research. Jason Quinn (talk) 03:19, 1 October 2013 (UTC)

Those mechanics are different to each other, I agree. But those aren't separate genres, the same as car and motorcycle racing games aren't. --NaBUru38 (talk) 17:26, 12 October 2013 (UTC)

Wiki Education Foundation update

THe last update about the activities of the Wiki Education Foundation (WEF) at the education noticeboard was in early August. I posted [[Wikipedia:Education_noticeboard#Wiki_Education_Foundation_update_September_update}another brief update]] a few days ago. A reminder of the background: the WEF is a new nonprofit. It was formed as a result of work done by a group of educators and Wikipedians, who (at the request of the WMF) spent some time over the last year or so designing a new organization that could assist with the increasing number of classes in the US and Canada that are making Wikipedia editing part of their coursework. More details on request, here or at the education noticeboard.

As I said, this update is brief; we hope to have more to report in a couple of weeks, but I didn't want to leave it any longer before posting an update. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 19:28, 6 October 2013 (UTC)

• Thanks for the update. Also, just noting that the link you posted to Wikipedia:Education_noticeboard#Wiki_Education_Foundation_update_September_update is broken in your post above because the } character was supposed to be a | character. Best. 64.40.54.137 (talk) 02:13, 7 October 2013 (UTC)

American Breast Cancer Foundation page so bad I don't know what to do with it

I just found the American Breast Cancer Foundation page and it's so horrible I don't even know where to start. I would mark it for speedy deletion but it doesn't really fit the criteria for that, exactly. It's a wheel war between pro-ABCF and anti-ABCF activists, and it's current state looks like a straight up PR statement. They have no regard for trying to have an objective point of view, the talk page is completely blank except for some notices at the top, and a quick google search for the first sentence of the article turns up half a dozen pages with the exact same text in it. I don't know whether the other sites copied from Wikipedia or somebody pasted text from another site into Wikipedia. Does that matter?

Looking through the history of the article shows nothing good that it can be reverted to. I would write a new article myself, but I don't have the time to do that right now. I also don't have the expertise or time to get involved in a ridiculous slap fight between PR flaks. If I wanted to do that I'd get a job in broadcast journalism.

I just kind of want to mark it with something so somebody who knows what they are doing takes a look at it. Maybe an administrator can remove it or write something good in it's place and lock it down or something? Can we do that? I have a feeling that if the article is simply deleted the offending parties will just repost it the next day.

If you are reading this and know what to do just do it. I am sorry I don't have time to fix this myself. It's just so bad I felt like I have to do something, so after researching it a bit I'm posting about it here.

Bubblesort (talk) 10:43, 7 October 2013 (UTC)

I removed the copyright violation. @Bubblesort: please feel free to WP:Be Bold and update the article to make it better. Thanks. 64.40.54.87 (talk) 03:39, 8 October 2013 (UTC)

Thanks! You did a great job! I guess the fix was more simple than I thought. I'll try to be more bold next time. Bubblesort (talk) 11:31, 8 October 2013 (UTC)

Please try to be more specific in your posts in the future so as we can answer efficiently. Thank you. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Magicalbeakz1 (talk • contribs) 09:54, 10 October 2013 (UTC)

How to place the citation for the entire section

The MOS:HEAD stated that "Citations should not be placed within or on the same line as section and subsection headings." In the article Decision field theory, the section heading "Decision Field Theory" contains a ref link, as it comes from this paper (on p.311, under "4.1. Sequential Sampling Deliberation Process"). In this case how to properly place the citation? --Quest for Truth (talk) 08:44, 8 October 2013 (UTC)

If a source supports an entire paragraph, the citation should go at the end of the paragraph. If it supports a whole section, it could be placed once, at the end of the section, or if this seems unclear or insufficient, it could be repeated at the end of each paragraph. If there are other citations intervening, it might be best to try one of the bundling approaches detailed in WP:BUNDLING. (That's part of Wikipedia:Citing sources, a guideline that has some pretty good advice about citation placement.) Bottom line: it should be clear what source is supporting what content but it shouldn't look ugly, and bracketed numerals on heading lines are very ugly. My two cents, anyway. Rivertorch (talk) 09:38, 8 October 2013 (UTC)

 Done thank you! --Quest for Truth (talk) 04:53, 10 October 2013 (UTC)

Looks good! Rivertorch (talk) 20:09, 10 October 2013 (UTC)

New Swabia

New Swabia's type setting is in chaos, could anybody fix that?--淺藍雪 (talk) 15:55, 8 October 2013 (UTC)

 Fixed -GoingBatty (talk) 00:56, 9 October 2013 (UTC)

Root of Arabic Word Tazkiah

There is an Arabic word Tazkiah (تزکیة). What is a root of this word in Arabic? --Mohammad Zakwan Nadwi (talk) 20:23, 8 October 2013 (UTC)

Help on Template:Events by year for decade

the Template:Events by year for decade does its job for events in all the years in that decade. but the births and deaths section is mostly empty (see) and is there anyway to include those like the events? Aswn (talk) 04:24, 10 October 2013 (UTC)

I'm afraid the births and deaths section has to be filled manually. --Quest for Truth (talk) 05:06, 10 October 2013 (UTC)

History of Wikipedia - how was the Wikipedia:SOPA vote advertised?

I am trying to recall what coverage was there outside an inclusion in the Wikipedia:Centralized discussions and some mentions in the Wikipedia:Signpost (yeah, I also recall there were some announcement on WMF blog, Facebook, and even in general media). How about on Wikipedia? Was there anything else outside CD/SIGN? Watchlist notice, a banner, etc.? I am primarily concerned with ways that people would have been able to find about this discussion and vote, i.e. how well was Wikipedia:SOPA advertised. --_{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here} 08:07, 10 October 2013 (UTC)

BACKLOG OF THE WEEK Category:Pages with broken reference names

Hello - some editors fight off the vandal hordes, as I do repairing pages with citation errors. If I didn't - there would be a large backlog in Category:Pages with incorrect ref formatting and in Category:Pages with missing references list as in Category:Pages with broken reference names (more than 1500 yesterday). But it is impossible to work it alone. Do you know how to do a "Blitz" (excuse the comparision) to find willing editors to work on it. It is much more easier to repair references if you do it one hour, one day or one week ago after the errors were made instead of months and years after the error was done. Very, very difficult to find these errors.

Only with WikiBlame Search it is possible to find and repair such errors.

Best wishes --Frze ^{> talk} 08:19, 10 October 2013 (UTC)

Article headings/section organisation

I know that the MOS has plenty of information about how headings such as "References" and "See also" should be used, as well as their order in an article. Are there specific styles for all section headings depending on the type of article? I believe that the biographies on living persons has some standard for types of headings in relevant articles. Is there such a thing for articles on settlements? And even if there are not specific names for the section headings, is there at least a documented and generally-followed order, such as geography, demographics, government, and then education?--ɱ (talk) 00:10, 11 October 2013 (UTC)

Some WikiProjects make guidelines or suggestions. See Wikipedia:WikiProject Cities/Settlements: Article structure. PrimeHunter (talk) 00:18, 11 October 2013 (UTC)

Well thanks! This is just what I needed.--ɱ (talk) 01:08, 11 October 2013 (UTC)

Kumusha Takes Wiki

Hello

I created a page to give quickly some explanation about a project starting this month for a year, Wikipedia:Kumusha Takes Wiki. Key words are Ivory Coast, Uganda, Wikimedia projects, OpenStreetMap and photographic contest in Africa. It is a French and English project. If you are interested, please do not hesitate to drop a word on the talk page or follow the twitter account. Anthere (talk) 21:20, 14 October 2013 (UTC)

Reykjavík University

In the ifobox, it is said that Reykjavík University belong to University of Cambridge, University of Camerino and MIT??--淺藍雪 (talk) 16:50, 16 October 2013 (UTC)

Apparently, it refers to the double degree programs (there is a reference provided for U. of Camerino). I am not sure this is a matter for the infobox though.--Ymblanter (talk) 06:52, 17 October 2013 (UTC)

stop telling us to donate

Stop annoying us all asking us to donate money to wik ip edia, j im my Wales has enough money, and times are tight now. Hardly any of us can afford to give to you, and I'd much rather look at text ads (not flash) than be annoyed by popups telling people to donate. When this gets reverted for v and alism, I will make more edits and spread the word until it is noticed. wp is not as free as it says. I H8 WP donations (talk) —Preceding undated comment added 14:40, 22 October 2013 (UTC)

Donations are voluntary. If you don't wish to donate, then don't. You are free to do as you wish. Good luck! --NaBUru38 (talk) 17:39, 22 October 2013 (UTC)

Sidebar menus no longer collapsible

So what happened to the "Enable collapsing of items in the sidebar in Vector skin" preference? It has unceremoniously disappeared, and I'm getting collapsed menus in my sidebar again (which I really, really hate, BTW). - dcljr (talk) 07:10, 11 October 2013 (UTC)

Works for me on this page, by adding ?useskin=vector to the URL/address, on Firefox 24. And it should work according to https://bugzilla.wikimedia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=46512#c13 anyway. Which browser is this about? Any relevant output in the browser's error console? --AKlapper (WMF) (talk) 16:08, 11 October 2013 (UTC)

I think you are talking about different things. Under Special:Preferences#mw-prefsection-rendering there previously was an option called "Enable collapsing of items in the sidebar in Vector skin". It's still documented at meta:Help:Preferences#Advanced options with the explanation "If you would prefer to see all links on the left sidebar at once, without having to open the different sections, you can turn this option off." Gerrit:83591 says "Killed the vector-collapsiblenav preference" PrimeHunter (talk) 21:16, 11 October 2013 (UTC)

Hmm. I don't really understand what exactly was changed and why... but I do know (and I will say it again) that I really, really, really detest having to click to show a "hidden" item in the sidebar before selecting it. (Whoever decided to force the collapsing in the first place should be shot.) Can someone give me the CSS or JS (I assume) I can use to keep all the submenus expanded until this stupidity is remedied by making the collapsing optional again? - dcljr (talk) 03:04, 19 October 2013 (UTC)

Wiki Education Foundation October update

There is a new Wiki Education Foundation update at the education noticeboard. Short version: we have posted job descriptions for the program manager and executive director positions, and made an offer to Jami Mathewson (the current PM for the existing education program) which she has accepted. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 13:14, 19 October 2013 (UTC)

And the community can give their own input as to what the job responsibilities of the executive director will be at the at the education noticeboard. Biosthmors (talk) pls notify me (i.e. {{U}}) while signing a reply, thx 16:48, 23 October 2013 (UTC)

Possible commercial copyvio: where to report?

This post alleges that Woolworth SA are using Wikipedia content, unattributed, on commercial products. I've read Wikipedia:Copyvio. Wikipedia:Mirrors and Forks and related pages, and can't find anywhere to report such issues. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 13:54, 19 October 2013 (UTC)

My understanding is that the only parties who can enforce a license breech are the individual content contributers, themselves. Alanscottwalker (talk) 15:13, 19 October 2013 (UTC)

This was actually escalated to WMF Legal, because someone also wrote OTRS to let us know. Not sure what happened after that. §FreeRangeFrog^croak 22:07, 24 October 2013 (UTC)

Watchlist-related question

On the watchlist options, you can hide bots, logged-in users, my own edits, etc. Is there a way to hide edits by autoconfirmed users? (Right now there's only a hide logged-in users option.) Spencer^T♦C 06:02, 21 October 2013 (UTC)

You might want https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:Contributions&contribs=newbie I don't know if it's possible to restrict this to just your own watchlist. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 21:13, 21 October 2013 (UTC)

Is inter-wiki translation OK?

Hi! Is it OK just to translate for example an English Wikipedia article to some other Wikipedia, copying its sources (with or without checking them). I heard that's violiting WP:NOR policy. Alex ^{discussion ★} 23:37, 21 October 2013 (UTC)

Certainly. See WP:TrU. KonveyorBelt 23:42, 21 October 2013 (UTC)

feedback wanted on draft rewrite of "Welcome to Wikipedia" print brochure

The Global Education Program team at Wikimedia Foundation is currently working on a new version of the "Welcome to Wikipedia" print brochure, which is used for many in-person outreach events like edit-a-thons, as well as for education program courses. You can see the feedback we collected on the previous version, and now we have text for a draft rewrite ready for review and editing. Please take a look and leave comments and/or make edits, as this rewrite will probably be in print for several years (the previous version was developed three years ago, with only minor text updates for subsequent printings in the meantime) and it typically reaches a few thousand people per year in English (plus a lot more in translated versions, as an online PDF, and in local printings for specific events).--Sage Ross (WMF) (talk) 15:05, 22 October 2013 (UTC)

Brackets Around References

When a person places brackets around each end of a reference (e.g. ) what is this called? It alters the way the reference appears on the article page, it sort of "collapses" the reference, but I'm not sure what you would call it. What is something a user could use in an edit summary when doing this to a reference? Also what's the purpose of doing it? 24.90.159.87 (talk) 15:16, 22 October 2013 (UTC)

This was asked, and answered, at Wikipedia:Help desk#Brackets Around Reference. DES ^(talk) 16:14, 22 October 2013 (UTC)

Neutrality

Wikipedia is supposed to be neutral. So why do numerous articles in the Sinai and Palestine campaign series refer to the Turks as “the enemy”. They weren’t my enemy, they weren’t the enemy of the Turkish people, they were Britain’s enemy. So “enemy” in this context clearly demonstrates the point of view of one side (THE BRITISH). Unfortunately it seems many of these articles have now somehow passed GA review. Are there any standards on your site at all? Does no one else see an issue with systematically referring to one party in a conflict as the enemy (and not the other)? You wouldn’t call the Palestinians the enemy on articles about the Israeli-Palestinian issue because it would be instantly labeled as POV. So why do it here? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 54.227.39.120 (talk) 13:00, 23 October 2013 (UTC)

Please link to those "numerous articles" so we can make sure that we talk about the same problem. :) — Preceding unsigned comment added by AKlapper (WMF) (talk • contribs) 14:41, 23 October 2013 (UTC)

Ah, looks like this refers to a specific article. In that case, might be worth to discuss on the related talk page: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Sinai_and_Palestine_Campaign --AKlapper (WMF) (talk) 14:54, 23 October 2013 (UTC)

Agree, the specific article talk page is the right place. Peacemaker67 (send... over) 04:02, 24 October 2013 (UTC)

• As an english speaking researcher, responsible for much of the editing of the Sinai and Palestine Campaign over the last three years, I have been limited to sources available in that language. There is not a lot written about the German and Ottoman side of the campaign and what there is, often does not specifically identify the German and Ottoman units, army or divisions involved so, 'enemy' is really the only term I can think of. Sometimes 'enemy' has been used when 'German and Ottoman forces' would be repetitive, but the meaning of the sentence lost, if the opponents of the EEF are not indicated. Are there any suggestions of other ways of approaching this problem? --Rskp (talk) 01:35, 25 October 2013 (UTC)
  • Opponent? Central Powers? Praemonitus (talk) 04:14, 25 October 2013 (UTC)

Thanks for that. I don't think Central Powers could be used as it includes Bulgaria which took no part in the S and P. --Rskp (talk) 04:18, 25 October 2013 (UTC)

I have made fairly lavish use of the suggested 'opponent,' so I hope that will assuage the ruffled feathers of the, obviously very experienced, blocked IP editor. Why the subterfuge? Is this IP an editor who has been in trouble and can't afford to be seen to be weighing in again? If so, is there any protection? Similar attacks have been made by an IP on the Capture of Damascus (1918) and the Stalemate in Southern Palestine articles. --Rskp (talk) 07:02, 25 October 2013 (UTC)

300,000th article edit.

Hey, I just passed 300,000 article edits. Hooray! bd2412 T 18:51, 23 October 2013 (UTC)

Congratulations! Lova Falk talk 19:10, 23 October 2013 (UTC)

Thanks. As a weird coincidence, a few hours later I made my 450,000th Wikipedia edit overall, which means that my edits are almost exactly 2/3 in article space. Cheers! bd2412 T 03:30, 24 October 2013 (UTC)

Congratulations, very impressive.--SPhilbrick(Talk) 21:38, 24 October 2013 (UTC)

Page unavailable due to technical error

Even for a seasoned editor like myself, WP's help pages can seem labyrinthine - I hope this is a reasonable place to post this . . . the page at River Usk has become unavailable though the talk page still functions. Last edit was by Verbcatcher a few hours ago. Can it be fixed please. Geopersona (talk) 07:20, 24 October 2013 (UTC)

Works for me. What's the exact error? --AKlapper (WMF) (talk) 14:44, 24 October 2013 (UTC)

When using Internet Explorer the title of the page appears followed by nothing more then I get locked out of Wikipedia and replaced by this error message: res://ieframe.dll/acr_error.htm#wikipedia.org,https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/River_Usk (with Internet Explorer has stopped trying to restore this website. It appears that the website continues to have a problem. on the screen). Another user has reported the same phenomeneon on the WikiProject Wales talkpage where I'd also made mention of it. A third regular editor reported no problem when using Google Chrome. I've just tried Chrome and had no problem but IE still won't open it. I've never had this issue on WP before in several years of editing and browsing the site. thanks Geopersona (talk) 17:53, 24 October 2013 (UTC)

If you don't mind navigating one more layer in the labyrinth, you may get more and quicker responses at Wikipedia:Village pump (technical). I assume you've done all the usual cache- and cookie-clearing procedures, restarted your computer, and so on. Rivertorch (talk) 21:46, 24 October 2013 (UTC)

Question now re-posed at W:VP(technical) as per Rivertorch's suggestion ... thanks Geopersona (talk) 18:13, 25 October 2013 (UTC)

Hello

Please help with references for my new article Florin Zamfirescu. Thank you--Scymso (talk) 15:34, 24 October 2013 (UTC)

The obvious place to start would be with the references from the Romanian Wikipedia article. [1]. In fact it might be simplest to translate that in its entirety, rather than starting from scratch. If you do, be sure to leave a note to say you have done this on the article talk page, to comply with copyright requirements. See Wikipedia:Translation for more on this. AndyTheGrump (talk) 21:56, 24 October 2013 (UTC)

I added one reference and slightly expanded the article. I have no time now, but the article can be further expanded using this reference.--Ymblanter (talk) 00:11, 25 October 2013 (UTC)

Proficient English writer.

Hello. I need a proficient English writer to help me with an article (my mother language is not english). Pls send me a msg. Xaris333 (talk) 00:10, 25 October 2013 (UTC)

Replied on your talk page. Rivertorch (talk) 06:54, 25 October 2013 (UTC)

Why do the lines break for endnotes and should we change it?

Looks bad how the lines break when there is an inline citation (or a few of them) at end of a sentence. After all the terms are all typed immediately next to each other. And the note number looks kind of silly starting a new line or as an orphan line.

Why do we have this (technically)?

And should we have it? What is normal style usage in the real world? (I can't imagine in HS typing class they condoned this and I imagine that MS Word does not break lines.)

69.255.27.249 (talk) 19:18, 26 October 2013 (UTC)

P.s. And please no answers along the lines of "that is how we do it here". Remember your screwed up date linking? Want answers in terms of (a) normal usage in the rest of the civilized world of Anglo-letters and (b) reader experience.

If I'm understanding you correctly, you mean a case like the following?

Some sentence.[1]
[2] Something else.
[3]

I took a stab at testing this out, and it looks like something that should never normally happen. If you have

Some sentence<ref>Ref text</ref>

that should never break between "sentence" and the ref, but if you have a space before the <ref> tag, or spaces between multiple ref tags, then line break can happen. Having spaces is discouraged by MOS:REFPUNC. Does this help? Chris857 (talk) 20:49, 26 October 2013 (UTC)

I see it all the time. Could you look at Fluorine under IE? And please no liberal comments about evil MSFT.69.255.27.249 (talk) 21:11, 26 October 2013 (UTC)

Oi. I took a look with IE8, and I see what you mean. What I wrote above was using Chrome. I personally don't know what differences there are that make each behave differently, or if there is an elegant way to make IE behave better. Chris857 (talk) 21:42, 26 October 2013 (UTC)

Will you turn in a bug report, for us please?69.255.27.249 (talk) 23:03, 26 October 2013 (UTC)

I checked this in Firefox 25.0, Chrome 29, Opera 16, IE10, Safari 6.0, iOS 7.0 Safari, and the browser in Android 4.1. Only IE10 showed this behavior. I'm not saying IE is evil, just misguided. Anomie⚔ 23:19, 26 October 2013 (UTC)

Turn in the bug report. We need to be configured to display in IE (major slice of our audience).69.255.27.249 (talk) 00:08, 27 October 2013 (UTC)

Go ahead. Anomie⚔ 00:21, 27 October 2013 (UTC)

Please report the bug to WMF bugzilla.69.255.27.249 (talk) 00:53, 27 October 2013 (UTC)

Women in XYZ

During DYK review I ran into an article about Women in Albania. I then noticed that there are many other articles on the same topic for almost all European countries. Most of them, if not all, are recently created by one editor @AnakngAraw:. I am uncertain if it is appropriate to have separate articles on women from certain countries and would appreciate opinion of other editors.--Antidiskriminator (talk) 22:45, 28 October 2013 (UTC)

Can you be more specific as to what concerns you have? Women's history is unquestionably a notable field of study, as the role of women in various societies and cultures has changed and evolved over time. I'm sure every nation of the world has had a different path that the rights of women have traveled over time, and each article is really a spinout of the main one. Tarc (talk) 23:32, 28 October 2013 (UTC)

I don't have any particular position here. I just wanted to double-check if it is appropriate to treat women of XYZ in separate article from other people of country xyz. I know that women in all societies are subject of research published in numerous sources. Different paths that the rights of women (just like rights of children, old people, men...) have traveled over time are maybe more connected with general historical trends, developments of the societies, their own social and cultural background rather than with modern-day countries. --Antidiskriminator (talk) 00:20, 29 October 2013 (UTC)

I agree that it's a notable topic; I think the name might be a bit misleading (since the article isn't really about Albania women). Maybe Women's rights in Albania or Gender roles in Albania, but it doesn't really matter much. -- Ypnypn (talk) 15:29, 29 October 2013 (UTC)

On Noticeboards: What cases of deliberately railroading a user exist?

On this Reddit thread http://www.reddit.com/r/news/comments/1p4eft/the_decline_of_wikipedia_wikipedias_community_has/ I found a user (reddit username "BigGapingAsshole") who said:

"Have you paid any attention to the noticeboards? They are not to deal with serious issues, they are there to be an arena for people to bicker. Admins do not deal with issues, they rule by fiat and then hold a popularity contest to defend thier diktat. I have watched other editors make the same suggestions to improve policies I would have, and the responses to it follow this pattern: 1) Attack the editor based on thier history. Any misstep made by the editor will be used as a excuse to dismiss the suggestion. Then, if 1) has not dissuaded the editor in question, we move on to 2) the WP:ESSAY citation that is used to say "Well, even if you were to put this up for discussion, the consensus formed cannot trump WP:POLICY". Then, if through some miracle the editor in question perseveres through the gauntlet (All the while being attacked and insulted by those who have no problems citing policies against the editor while ignoring WP:NPA, WP:CIVIL, and WP:AGF), then they will find an admin to block this user using either a) He's a sockpuppet, b) He's not here to build an encyclopedia, or c) He's being disruptive. This pattern has played out so many times that I'm actually sad that I am so familiar with it. As for me dealing with jerk users, I don't edit wikipedia, and have not for years after I got a taste of the wikipedia treatment when I tried to become an editor. If you are happy doing it, more power to you. Just be prepared for the day when you get tossed out for crossing the wrong person."

While I clarified that WP:ESSAY refers to general advice made by editors, I have a suspicion that there are cases where users have been railroaded. Would anyone mind checking to see if there are such cases and listing them? Having examples would be very, very helpful so we can learn from them and prevent this from happening or recognize it so it can be treated.

WhisperToMe (talk) 03:02, 25 October 2013 (UTC)

For past cases of dispute resolution, you could examine Wikipedia:Arbitration/Index/Cases. Praemonitus (talk) 04:13, 30 October 2013 (UTC)

Update from Wiki Education Foundation late October 2013

An update from the Wiki Education Foundation has been posted at the Education Noticeboard. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 11:16, 31 October 2013 (UTC)

Reference desk Making shit up desk - unsourced health and safety advice anyone?

Wikipedia:Reference desk/Science#Drinking Ethanol, does it makes you live longer? --Anthonyhcole (talk · contribs · email) 09:48, 31 October 2013 (UTC)

That whole section should be oversighted and the users there reminded about WP:NOMEDICAL.--ukexpat (talk) 16:11, 1 November 2013 (UTC)

Well, my comment over there seems to have fallen on deaf ears...I give up.--ukexpat (talk) 19:21, 1 November 2013 (UTC)

Selection of Electoral Commission for 2013 ArbCom elections

Per the 2013 ArbCom Election RfC, the selection of the Electoral Commission overseeing the 2013 ArbCom election is currently taking place at Wikipedia:Requests for comment/Arbitration Committee Elections December 2013/Electoral Commission. Editors are invited to comment there until 23:59, 6 November 2013. Cheers. 64.40.54.186 (talk) 03:11, 2 November 2013 (UTC)

Is The Maria Abduction in Greece a valid article for Wikipedia

Please ignore the article title. If it is valid as an article then it can be changed. Please look, instead, at whether this news event is, of itself, suitable for a Wikipedia article. I am in two minds about it.

When considering this please do not consider whether the article is any good. Please only consider whether it should be proposed for deletion, ideally by discussion, not CSD or PROD, or whether it meets the inclusion criteria here. I have done some small work on the article to turn it into a shape where t can be considered, but am neutral at present. I felt it would be a misuse of AfD simply to take it there, and would be a slap in the face for the new editor who quite reasonably expressed a view that we did not have it, so probably ought to. Fiddle Faddle 11:37, 3 November 2013 (UTC)

It is certainly Verifiable, the only question is whether it meets WP:NOT#NEWS. But since this is a one-off event, and is not merely routine reporting on an "announcement, sports, or celebrities", it is probably good on that count too. The only suggestion I would have is that the article would probably be better served if it were to be moved to something like Maria (Roma abductee), where any information on the girl or the criminal investigation would be certainly within the article topic. VanIsaac_{WS Vex}^contribs 21:31, 3 November 2013 (UTC)

Template:Period color, which color set should we use?

We are having a discussion about which color set shall be used for Template:period color, you have 5 different color sets to support. The reason for discussion + place to comment is at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Geology#Template:Period color, which color set should we use?. 107.3.117.228 (talk) 13:49, 3 November 2013 (UTC) 8:49am 11/03/2013 EST.

Request for comment at Talk:TheBus (Honolulu)

I have opened a request for comment at Talk:TheBus (Honolulu) regarding the vehicle lists in the fleet section. Please feel free to review the matter and add to the discussion. Musashi1600 (talk) 11:31, 4 November 2013 (UTC)

Proficient English writer.

Hello. I need a proficient English writer to help me with an article (my mother language is not english). Pls send me a msg. Xaris333 (talk) 15:33, 4 November 2013 (UTC)

Do you mean a Wikipedia article? Which one is it? --NaBUru38 (talk) 22:40, 4 November 2013 (UTC)

Yes, a wikipedia article. Nea Salamina Famagusta FC Xaris333 (talk) 12:00, 5 November 2013 (UTC)

RFC: posted regarding WP:LINE

An RFC has been posted here to discuss the use of horizontal lines in the days of the year pages. -- Mufka ^{(u) (t) (c)} 14:28, 5 November 2013 (UTC)

https://www.change.org/petitions/the-1-generous-thing-mobile-providers-could-do-to-help-kids-all-over-the-world

FYI. — Allrounder (talk) 16:22, 6 November 2013 (UTC)

I just sent a note to two members Wikipedia Zero team pointing them to this thread and the petition. Sven Manguard Wha? 19:26, 6 November 2013 (UTC)

I can't clean up a site.

when viewed in user's view, National English Ability Test shows the mark-up for some of the references I put in. I don't know what I've done wrong. Maybe it's because some of the editing was in VE and some using Proveit. Any-way, can some-one clean it up? Kdammers (talk) 07:48, 1 November 2013 (UTC)

 Done. It looks like WMF has still made absolutely no effort at reforming VE from the unmitigated disaster that destroys every page that comes in contact with it. So we just end up with good editors like you frustrated by putting out quality edits that get converted by this thing into crap that you can't fix. VanIsaac_{WS Vex}^contribs 08:32, 1 November 2013 (UTC)

Hi Kdammers,

It looks like you typed out the wikicode for some of the references instead of using VisualEditor's built-in reference dialog. VisualEditor then believes you actually want the wikicode displayed in the article, so it wraps whatever text it believes is wikicode in <nowiki> tags to "preserve" it for you. I realize this isn't usually what people want, but the alternative is apparently to make it nearly impossible to actually talk about wikicode on any page that VisualEditor sees, so that's the choice they made.

However, for the complicated parts of the problem: VisualEditor didn't recognize your unclosed ref tag (you had a typo in your first typed-out ref, so that it said <ref>Whatever<ref> instead of <ref>Whatever</ref>—the slash is critically important) as being wikitext, so it didn't protect the code you added. That typo caused part of the article, including the next ref, to disappear, exactly as making that mistake does in the old wikitext editor.

The problem with the ugly "name" bit was created here, again in the wikitext editor, when you changed the wikitext code from <ref name="whatever"> to <ref> name="whatever">. In other words, the problem was not due to VisualEditor, but with the "design decision" of wikitext, which creates a mess unless people get every single angle bracket and every single slash in the right place. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 01:39, 8 November 2013 (UTC)

Thank you for the comments. How-ever, I did not hand-edit: I used ProveIt. Does ProveIt have a bug? Or did the slash get removed by VE? (And as a side-note, when I make a mistake in the wikitext editor, I can pretty much walk my way through and find where I left out a symbol or accidentally didn't use upper case to to get the right symbol and even more complicated things. But in VE, like in MSW, so much is hidden that I feel my hands are tied.) Kdammers (talk) 02:03, 8 November 2013 (UTC)

The problem exists in the very first revision, which you did in VisualEditor. If you open that revision in VisualEditor now, you can easily see that there is a problem with it, since everything after the first ref tag disappears. However, what you see now in VisualEditor isn't what you would have seen at the time. What you would have seen at the time was (for that ref) exactly the same thing as what you would have seen in the wikitext editor: It provides for testing in speaking, listening, writing, and reading.<ref>http://www.koreatimes.co.kr/www/news/nation/2013/10/181_133721.html<ref> The test was developed as an attempt to less Korea's dependence... The next ref you created in VisualEditor's reference dialog, so it would have displayed onscreen as a little blue number.

You used ProveIt in the second edit, but the problem already existed by that time. (AFAIK, it's not possible to use ProveIt inside VisualEditor.) Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 14:22, 8 November 2013 (UTC)

Hiring

The WikiAfrica project at the Africa Centre is seeking a researcher who has exceptional investigative, data gathering, Wikipedia/Wikimedia knowledge and writing skills for an exciting 4-week intensive short-term project for WikiAfrica’s Kumusha Takes Wiki project.
Proficiency in French is a bonus, as is experience of Uganda and/or Cote d’Ivoire. The researcher will need to start immediately.
Applicants should submit a CV showing relevant research experience to wikiafrica @ africacentre.net.
Application deadline: 15th November.
Anthere (talk)

The same lame joke I always make...

I will be taking a trip tomorrow, and will be unable to edit for a week. Please try to finish the encyclopedia by the time I get back. Cheers! bd2412 T 02:09, 9 November 2013 (UTC)

WikiProject Inline Templates... wanna participate?

Hi. This is a request that some editors here consider becoming members/watchers of Wikipedia:WikiProject Inline Templates. As the name implies, this Wikiproject focuses on topics about those little tags like "citation needed". This important project seems to have too few active members. As the project's current activity is pretty low, it won't cause too much activity to your watchlist. Participation is mostly just commenting on an occasional talk page discussion. Thanks for your consideration. Jason Quinn (talk) 21:40, 9 November 2013 (UTC)

Interesting. Watching. ChrisGualtieri (talk) 02:30, 11 November 2013 (UTC)

Nominations for the 2013 English Wikipedia Arbitration Committee elections are open

Nominations for the 2013 English Wikipedia Arbitration Committee elections are officially open. The nomination period runs from Sunday, 10 November at 00:01 (UTC) until Tuesday, 19 November at 23:59 (UTC). Editors interested in running should review the eligibility criteria listed at the top of Wikipedia:Arbitration Committee Elections December 2013/Candidates then create a candidate page following the instructions there. 64.40.54.211 (talk) 06:52, 10 November 2013 (UTC)

Proficient English writer.

Hello. I need a proficient English writer to help me with a Wikipedia article (my mother language is not english). Just to read it and correct some mistakes. Pls send me a msg. Xaris333 (talk) 03:25, 14 November 2013 (UTC)

@Xaris333: - Have you tried Wikipedia:WikiProject Guild of Copy Editors/Requests‎? GoingBatty (talk) 00:30, 15 November 2013 (UTC)

Work sorely needed on U.S. congressional districts

Hi. The state of the articles on U.S. congressional districts is frankly an embarrassment to Wikipedia. The once-a-decade redistricting process was completed over a year ago, and still the maps on Wikipedia have not been updated. The National Atlas has published congressional district maps for each state, and the website specifically says that it "has no plans to create a new set of maps" similar to the individual district maps that we had for the previous set of districts. So what is needed is for the state maps to be uploaded to Commons and for every district article to be updated so that the map for its state replaces the now-obsolete single-district map, with the latter perhaps remaining further down the article for historical context.

I simply do not have the time for such a task. I posted a request to the appropriate WikiProject last week, but no one seems to be paying attention over there. If anyone has advice for a better venue for this request, I'd appreciate it. If anyone starts to actually do the needed job, I'd be glad to know about that also. Thanks, --BlueMoonlet (t/c) 18:03, 14 November 2013 (UTC)

Squirrels chewing on the servers

Is there a squirrel inside the Wikimedia servers chewing on the cabling? I have to mash F5 every time I need to make an edit because it returns an error each time, and it's been like this for the past hour. --benlisquare_T•C•E 19:01, 14 November 2013 (UTC)

Plagiarism of Wikipedia

Hi All

Does anyone know of any page that lists everyone who has been accused/caught out/admitted to/etc plagiarising Wikipedia?

Thanks

Mrjohncummings (talk) 14:16, 6 November 2013 (UTC)

Not that I am aware, and I think such a list could be quite large and hard to keep complete. Chris857 (talk) 14:38, 6 November 2013 (UTC)

It might be worth listing widely reported or otherwise notable instances. bd2412 T 14:43, 6 November 2013 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Press coverage lists Rand Paul on the bottom of the 2013 subpage, so we have a list of one at least. Chris857 (talk) 15:39, 6 November 2013 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Mirrors and forks lists many websites that don't comply with all legalities for reusing Wikipedia content (and some that do). Rmhermen (talk) 07:52, 10 November 2013 (UTC)

Mrjohncummings: See WP:copyright problems#Backwards copying: when Wikipedia had (or may have had) it first and its template {{backwardscopy}} which as a hidden category Category:Wikipedia article talk pages incorporating the backwardscopy template which currently has 928 member pages. -- PBS (talk) 13:41, 17 November 2013 (UTC)

Internet Archive and HTTPS

Without getting too deep into tin foil territory, encryption is one of many essential steps to ensure readers' privacy. Since October 24, 2013, the Internet Archive uses HTTP Secure by default (see the video announcement by Brewster Kahle). They encourage their visitors to access their site using an encrypted connection.

In my opinion, Wikipedia should support this effort and start to use HTTPS for all outgoing links to the Internet Archive. I've been told there are currently about 160,000 of them in Wikipedia. According to Alexa, Wikipedia currently ranks fourth among upstream sites to archive.org [2], which means we'd really have an impact here. Yesterday, I started to fix a couple of hundred of those links semi-automatically (with AWB) before being told by several editors it would be better to first discuss this topic more generally in Village Pump.

So what is our stand in this issue? There was a “HTTP vs. HTTPS” discussion in the context of The Pirate Bay in 2010, but obviously TPB is not nearly as important on Wikipedia as is the Wayback Machine, so we better discuss this here on a broader scale. As far as I know, Wikipedia supports websites' efforts to encrypt and authenticate their incoming traffic. Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube have been using https:// by default for years, and our link templates {{Facebook}}, {{Twitter}}, and {{YouTube}} acknowledge this.

The question is: should our guidelines encourage editors to prefer HTTPS over HTTP links (in the case of the Internet Archive!)? In fact, I was already being bold and changed WP:WBM in this regard three days ago, so I guess this edit is up for discussion here, too but this edit has already been reverted by User:Lexein. --bender235 (talk) 10:38, 9 November 2013 (UTC)

• No, guidelines should not encourage HTTPS links over HTTP, unless HTTP is no longer supported by that site. Template support of HTTPS is fine. Further, AWB or bots should not be used to switch links in articles from HTTP to HTTPS. Excuse the length of why not:

1. Wikipedia is WP:NOT your nanny. WP is not here to secure people's web browsing from snooping. That is the user's responsibility (VPN, secure proxy, EFF's HTTPS Everywhere, etc). Wikipedia itself is not HTTPS by default. When it becomes so by consensus or WMF decision, then perhaps links to outside resources should be HTTPS, but not by AWB or bots. Instead, such URI switching should be done by server-side on-the-fly link substitution.
2. YouTube has not been using https:// by default for years - they do not automatically switch to https if accessed via http://. Try it on a browser lacking HTTPS Everywhere (example: Opera, for testing purposes).
3. Facebook, Twitter and Archive.org do default to HTTPS, but they already handle any URI HTTP protocol switch automatically. We do not need to mass edit WP articles to use HTTPS in links to them.
4. As of 2013-09-02, 24.6% of the Internet's 168088 most popular web sites have a secure implementation of HTTPS.[3] When it gets to 50%, we should revisit this as an RFC. Looks like it's 50% now, so I'm just fundamentally disagreeing with mass edits for this purpose. See #1.
5. AWB and/or bots should not alter links in articles unless HTTP protocol is not supported anymore for that site. Flooding watchlists is a serious concern - it's annoying to thousands of editors at once and has been beaten back dozens of times. Example: when an editor changed user names, she used AWB to rename herself in every Talk page and archived Talk page she had ever visited; that editor lost all the good will she had ever built up in the community, just for watchlist flooding.
6. HTTPS is blocked or snooped anyways in many corporate environments, and some countries. Imposition of HTTPS by Wikipedia will break access for those users.
7. HTTPS is not supported well in many handheld devices (meaning slow & buggy, cert issues).
8. It imposes certificate handling burden on users. It forces connection startups to be slower in every case. HTTPS will, for many users, break access to resources, by adding complications.

Should this be in WP:Perennials? --Lexein (talk) 11:48, 9 November 2013 (UTC)

Wikipedia is going to HTTPS as a default Josh Parris 11:52, 9 November 2013 (UTC)

Mmm, HTTP access doesn't automatically switch to HTTPS. Default means default. My "if" clause kicks in when it truly defaults to HTTPS. --Lexein (talk) 13:05, 9 November 2013 (UTC)

With all due respect to your arguments, do you see the circular reasoning in Point 1? You oppose to establish consensus on using HTTPS because there is not yet consensus to use HTTPS.

Also, Points 6–8 sound more like 2008 than 2013. Which current handheld device cannot handle HTTPS? --bender235 (talk) 11:55, 9 November 2013 (UTC)

(3 ec)You're asking for a single guideline change, I'm saying wait until other, broader consensus is reached. Not circular, AFAICT. --Lexein (talk) 12:10, 9 November 2013 (UTC)

... which is what I'm trying to find out here. --bender235 (talk) 12:18, 9 November 2013 (UTC)

No, you're asking for a single guideline change. You want a real RFC for the broader discussion. --Lexein (talk) 13:05, 9 November 2013 (UTC)

All I wanted was the answer to a simple question: Internet Archive switched to HTTPS by default; do we respect that, or not? --bender235 (talk) 13:09, 9 November 2013 (UTC)

Point 5: A quick-fix can be implemented in templates; urls (in cite templates and infoboxes, etc) can be transformed from http to https using lua. No editor cost, no watchlist impact. Josh Parris 12:02, 9 November 2013 (UTC)

(3 ec)Agreed for templates and infobox specific cases, if HTTP is no longer supported or always, for all devices, the site switches to HTTPS anyways. --Lexein (talk) 12:10, 9 November 2013 (UTC)

It's not so much how we do it, but rather should we encourage this at all. Internet Archive switched to HTTPS by default for a reason. Do we respect that, or not? --bender235 (talk) 12:04, 9 November 2013 (UTC)

Point 4:Sure, if you want the best. But over 50% of sites implement some kind of SSL right now. Josh Parris 12:08, 9 November 2013 (UTC)

And then again, it is not about every website, it is about the Internet Archive. And they use TLS 1.2 with AES_256_CBC and PFS key exchange. It doesn't get any better. --bender235 (talk) 12:18, 9 November 2013 (UTC)

50%? Where's that from? Closer to 25% per the source above. --Lexein (talk) 12:54, 9 November 2013 (UTC)

"SSL Security Summary", first graph on the page you linked to. Josh Parris 23:47, 9 November 2013 (UTC)

Yep, it's at 50% - quite a jump. Hm. I still don't want AWB or bots changing links - See my #1 above. --Lexein (talk) 11:58, 13 November 2013 (UTC)

Point 6: I don't see the necessity of waiving reader's privacy for 99% of Wikipedia readers just because 1% may browse from within a company network that disallows HTTPS for the purpose of deep packet inspection. If anything, those 1% of users can switch to HTTP manually if their HTTPS request returns an error message, instead of asking the other 99% to do it the other way round. --bender235 (talk) 13:25, 9 November 2013 (UTC)

• Yes, editors should be encouraged to link to archive.org via https rather than http Josh Parris 23:52, 9 November 2013 (UTC)

• No Totally pointless. If a target site wants to impose SSL, that's their call and they can do it through HTTP, same as ever. Andy Dingley (talk) 01:50, 11 November 2013 (UTC)

What makes http:// preferable over https:// if both are offered by a given website (in this case Internet Archive)? --bender235 (talk) 03:09, 11 November 2013 (UTC)

• Yes - Let's not get on the matter of snooping and other red herrings. The simple fact that it promotes the safety of all users without having any negative impact and is highly encouraged by all manner of IT professionals and even the target site shows that it is preferable. According to my URL, I am browsing Wikipedia with HTTPS and when I google Archive.org I am directed through it via HTTPS, but if I go through a link to Wikipedia I arrive at HTTP. It'd be beneficial to update these even if it means doing them in the labor intensive way. ChrisGualtieri (talk) 02:14, 11 November 2013 (UTC)
• No Not everybody is using https: for Wikipedia. Some are unable to do so, others choose not to. If a website offers access via either http: or https: we should provide protocol-relative links so that readers are not inconvenienced by having the protocol switched unnecessarily. Something very similar came up recently at Template talk:OCLC. If the site allows either form but immediately switches people from one to the other (like Google switches people from http: to https:), that's their business; we should not pre-emptively force one protocol to be used when it is not necessary to do so. --Redrose64 (talk) 19:00, 11 November 2013 (UTC)

Could everyone please get their heads around the fact that this isn't about "a website" or "every website" for that matter, but only Internet Archive. The IA uses https:// by default. They explicitly want people to link to them via https://. It makes absolute no sense to encourage people to create new http:// links to IA when they are outdated. I'm still waiting for the explanation on what makes http:// preferable over https:// at all. --bender235 (talk) 20:58, 11 November 2013 (UTC)

I begin to get an idea that the main knock on this proposal is not "http:// is better than https://", but only "Changing it would disturb my watchlist, so please don't." --bender235 (talk) 09:44, 12 November 2013 (UTC)

I was talking about Internet Archive: although I did mention OCLC (indirectly) and Google (directly), the first was as an example where a similar question has recently arisen; and the second was as an example of a site which permits http: URLs but redirects those to https:. Back to the point: are the http: links to IA actually broken? If so, fine, let's switch them to https: - but if they still work, why bother? If the site really want visitors to use https: they can set up their own redirection in the same fashion as Google (that's if they have not done so already). But the page linked by bender235 (which incidentally is also available at the equivalent http: URL without redirection to https:) does state "Visitors to archive.org and openlibrary.org will https unless they try to use http", "It is still possible to retrieve files via http to help with backward compatibility", and "Users of the Wayback Machine, similarly will use the secure version by default, but can use the http version which will help playback some complicated webpages", so not only is the option provided, but they do recognise that http: may be preferable in some situations. --Redrose64 (talk) 09:55, 12 November 2013 (UTC)

IA does still allow http:// deep links. It only redirects you to https:// if you start from the homepage. Yet they encourage you to use https:// for all deep links from now on. Why? Because it benefits readers' privacy. Is that any of Wikipedia's concern? Apparently it is. But unfortunately not for all Wikipedians.

I'm not naive. I know https:// does not offer perfect privacy for everyone. But if offers some compared to none. At least https:// protects you from this (eavesdropping from non-US intelligence agencies) and this (eavesdropping from private entities). Which, to me, is better than nothing. And seriously, apart from the "oh god, my watchlist looks so messy today" there's no downside at all for Wikipedia to do this: to not only have people reading Wikipedia on a secure connection, but also enabling to check references (in apparently our main online repository) on a secure connection. It is just so easy. I don't understand why we still argue about this. --bender235 (talk) 12:22, 12 November 2013 (UTC)

• Use protocol-relative links (that is, // instead of http:// or https:// -- Ypnypn (talk) 23:12, 11 November 2013 (UTC)
  • Support. This is neutral, and uses whatever protocol the user is currently using. This was recommended already long ago in several places on WP, Mediawiki, and meta. Couldn't find it at the moment. Too sleepy. --Lexein (talk) 10:53, 12 November 2013 (UTC) No, agreeing with Andy Dingley below. --Lexein (talk) 11:58, 13 November 2013 (UTC)

Help me out here: where's the difference between switching from http:// to https:// and switching from http:// to //? Does not both require the same amout of changes and cause the same amount of watchlist hassle? --bender235 (talk) 10:59, 12 November 2013 (UTC)

No - because WP has already started (a pointless piece of security theatre) to use https:// itself. Going protocol-relative would make every link into https://, which is ludicrously unworkable. Andy Dingley (talk) 12:27, 12 November 2013 (UTC)

Despite the risk of going off-topic: would you mind explaining to us why Wikipedia's (or any site's, for the matter) switch to https:// is "pointless security theatre"? --bender235 (talk) 12:39, 12 November 2013 (UTC)

Just read about "security theater". My main point is still my #1, above. --Lexein (talk) 11:58, 13 November 2013 (UTC)

Apart from that "you want reader's privacy? Then take care of it on your own!" being shamefully egoistic, hasn't your Point 1 already been rendered moot, since Wikipedia will in fact soon use HTTPS by default?

Also, could someone please explain to me why Wikipedia's (and Wayback's) switch to HTTPS is "pointless"? --bender235 (talk) 12:17, 13 November 2013 (UTC)

You don't understand how protocol relative links work. If a user is visiting Wikimedia sites using HTTPS, protocol relative links will point to HTTPS. If a user is visiting using HTTP, protocol relative links will point to HTTP. They are called protocol relative because they are relative to the protocol the browser is currently using. If a user is browsing the site using HTTPS, obviously it works for them and they want to be on HTTPS. Internet Archive supports HTTPS, so there's no harm in using URL protocol links for them. In fact, it's absolutely what we should be doing from a technical perspective. Stop bringing politics into this.--Ryan lane (talk) 20:40, 16 November 2013 (UTC)

• Comment: Saying "In my opinion, Wikipedia should support this effort and start to use HTTPS for all outgoing links to the Internet Archive" is a poor way to begin a discussion about what is actually proposed running AWB to change tens of thousands of existing links. If we're talking about future edits, we should be discussing how we can get thousands of editors to stop using HTTP links to IA when they do future edits. Do we want to create a guideline? Do we want to use EditFilter to block this? Do we want a bot to change HTTP to HTTPS, after a human makes an edit, and then notify the editor who made the HTTP link of his/her "error"? But that doesn't seem to be the main issue here - so I, too, oppose modifying 160,000 existing links, for the reasons cited above involving disruption of watchlists, and the precedent that this would set. -- John Broughton (♫♫) 23:22, 11 November 2013 (UTC)

It amazes me how many people put their personal convenience over the benefit of the whole Wikipedia. "Yeah, I'm for readers' privacy and all that, but not if it messes up my watchlist." Is this the new approach to the Wikipedia idea?

Do we want to create a guideline?

Not a guideline, but an update of the existing WP:WBM manual. I recently fixed it, to have it recommending a https:// link, but that was reverted by Lexein.

Do we want a bot to change HTTP to HTTPS?

In fact I wanted just that. This whole debate started with this bot request of mine. Since most (not all) Wayback links are implemented in one of the many CS1-based citation templates, we could also very easily implement some sort of filter that automatically takes |archiveurl=http://web.archive.org/... for a HTTPS link, as suggested by User:Werieth.

Running AWB to change tens of thousands of existing links?

If that's what it takes? Sure. HTTPS support for Wayback did not exist only short time ago. Obviously, the large majority of links to them are still http://. But why keep them as such, after we finally agree on respecting Wayback's request to link them via https:// only? Is there some grandfather clause in regard to external links I missed? If we for some reason dediced to no longer link to YouTube or Twitter tomorrow, would we keep all the links that have been added until then, or would we gradually delete them? --bender235 (talk) 09:39, 12 November 2013 (UTC)

If it's done as an optional change in AWB, then it wouldn't kill people's watchlists, because it would only happen when the article is being edited anyway. (You'd still have extra mess in the diffs to view.) You could also have a bot run very slowly (e.g., one article per minute) to avoid killing people's watchlists. Since there are a few hundred thousand links (often multiple links per article), it might take about a year at one page per minute, but it would get done eventually.

If we were going to make such a change, then I'd rather see protocol-relative links. Some people have gone to some trouble to turn off HTTPS links, and that ought to be respected whenever we reasonably can. WhatamIdoing (talk) 01:57, 13 November 2013 (UTC)

I'm in support of the bot option. And it might not even take as long as you projected, since about half of all Wayback links are within the |archiveurl= parameter of our citation templates, which means some Lua script could solve the problem without actually having to edit the pages.

As for the "protocol-relative option", I don't really see the point of it. Wikipedia is going to use to HTTPS by default soon, and Internet Archive already does. So who would we keep that http:// option for? I don't see those corner cases existing. --bender235 (talk) 10:07, 13 November 2013 (UTC)

I would use protocol relative links for two reasons...

1. Reader difficulty in accessing the archived web pages, and
2. If Wikipedia does go HTTPS only no further edits will be needed.

– Allen4names (contributions) 19:25, 13 November 2013 (UTC)

I totally support the idea. Following User:Jimbo Wales's talk in Wikimania 2013 I think we need to make Wikipedia more secure for its editors and readers. -- Magioladitis (talk) 15:05, 15 November 2013 (UTC)

I was in Hong Kong, and I remember Wales' opening speech. He confirmed what one can read here, that the Wikimedia Foundation wants to move Wikipedia and all its sister projects to HTTPS by default. And if we do, why stop there? People should not only read Wikipedia on a secure connection, but also check references on one. --bender235 (talk) 19:27, 15 November 2013 (UTC)

I really don't understand why there is any controversy in this thread. It looks like internet archive force redirects everyone to HTTPS except for the wayback machine, which supports both HTTPS and HTTP. This is simple. Use protocol relative URLs for the wayback machine and use HTTPS links for all of the rest of internet archive. Using protocol relative URLs for sites that support both HTTP and HTTPS should be our default policy. Using HTTPS links for sites that only support HTTPS is the only sane approach as otherwise the user will get a dead link at worst and a redirect to HTTPS at best which would harm their privacy and harm their performance. Also, let's keep the rhetoric away from what Wikipedia is doing or plans on doing in regards to HTTPS; it has nothing to do with this topic. If you're really concerned about that, start a new thread and I'll happily discuss it.--Ryan lane (talk) 20:20, 16 November 2013 (UTC)

• Use protocol-relative links for wayback machine and https links for the rest of internet archive
  • support: This topic is really a technical topic and politics have nothing to do with it. The wayback machine supports both HTTP and HTTPS, so if a user is already using HTTPS on Wikipedia they should continue to be on HTTPS when they visit internet archive. Since the rest of internet archive is HTTPS only, we shouldn't bother using protocol relative links (though that's an option), we should simply use HTTPS, since the user will simply get a redirect to HTTPS otherwise, which is a waste of time and of the user's privacy. The only other technically sane argument in this topic is to use only protocol relative URLs so that it's easier to remember which sets of links to internet archive should use which type of url.--Ryan lane (talk) 20:35, 16 November 2013 (UTC)

I opened a new thread at WP:VP/P. --bender235 (talk) 22:19, 16 November 2013 (UTC)

Wikiquette review requested

I apologize in advance for this: This is really too long, about something probably trivial, and most won't read it. For anyone that does, thanks in advance.

I'm an editor that has recently returned after a long lay-off and things appear to have shifted in some ways during my absence. So I'm looking for some assistance to see if I handled an interaction with another editor "the right way" (for whatever values of "right" are applied). I'm coming here because, frankly, I don't know where to go. The old Wikiquette board apparently blew up while I was gone and other areas like the coaching assistance are now marked "historical." Even Village pump (assistance) is a memory. Odd.

Anyway. My interaction is with the User:Navakawiki. Judging by his/her contributions, this user has been here for some time. They mostly make edits relating to the Royal College Colombo or its alumni. Many of these changes are made apparently based on their personal knowledge.

1. They made changes to the article C. L. V. Jayathilake to change the spelling of the subject's name without providing a source, and against the two sources that had previously been linked.
2. They posted a notice on the BLP noticeboard asking for the article title to be changed to their preferred spelling.
3. I reverted those changes as unsourced BLP edits.
4. I replied on BLPN explaining why I had reverted and linking to the policies such as RS and BLP.
5. They embedded a request to "revert the revert" in a barnstar on my talk page. Which seems bizarre.
6. I responded on their talk page saying why I would not (yet) restore the spelling change and explaining the need for sourcing in changes to articles on BLP

Yeah, I know, tl;dr-inducing. What I want to know is two things:

• Did I respond appropriately to Navakawiki according to whatever norms are on wiki these days? Everything now seems to jump from talk pages directly to AN or AN/I, and I don't think this merits discussion there. On the other hand, they apparently have a record of not sourcing their edits on their favorite subject so there's clearly some changes necessary. I would once upon a time have suggested coaching, but I see that is not any longer an option.
• Have barnstars been deprecated in some way? Even when I look at other user's pages, they seem to stop sometime last year. Was there a discussion I messed about them? This use of one as a request to edit is also not how I remember their usage from before.

Thanks for any advice. --Eggishorn (talk) (contrib) 21:37, 15 November 2013 (UTC)

You seem to have been absent from June 2007 to September 2013 (with brief returns in May 2010 and May 2013). In that time, yes, there have been many changes, so you probably missed the deployment of WikiLove, a method for sending out barnstar-style messages more easily. Unfortunately, some people use the feature for negative comments too. You can still send out barnstars in the traditional way, but Flow might stamp on that. --Redrose64 (talk) 22:04, 15 November 2013 (UTC)

Great to see 'evidence' that this is run by some true enthusiasts. :) Yes, I have been here for sometime but was not really active. Reason is, most of the time I come across complete articles and the articles are getting updated rapidly. Furthermore, I do not intend to provide false information, that is why I started with my Alma Mater and town, so that I can be sure of the credibility of the information that I provide. Actually want to achieve a higher status to add photos etc. since some of the Sri Lanka related articles lack those and to progress with familiar edits up to that point. Hope it's not bad..! :) - Navaka — Preceding unsigned comment added by Navakawiki (talk • contribs) 03:19, 18 November 2013 (UTC)

Wikipedia:WikiProject Encyclopaedia Britannica

The copying of text from out of copyright 1911 Encyclopaedia Britannica Eleventh Edition (EB1911) is allowed providing the text is properly attributed under the conditions laid out in the plagiarism guideline and there is a template to help with this called {{EB1911}}. However many of the Wikipedia articles that incorporate text from EB1911 were created a decade ago when WP:V was in its infancy. as a result there is a hidden category called Category:Wikipedia articles incorporating a citation from the 1911 Encyclopaedia Britannica with no article parameter‎ which contains about 10,000 Wikipedia articles that acknowledge text was copied from EB1911 but do not state from which of the 40,000 articles in the 29 volumes it originates. To meet the requirements of WP:V all these templates in the 10,000 Wikipedia articles need to have the parameter title=EB1911 article title added to the {{EB1911}} template (or wstitle=EB1911 article title if the EB1911 article exists under Wikisource:1911 Encyclopædia Britannica.

So to give a focus to editors who choose to work on the backlog or to add more content, I have created a new sub project of Wikipedia:WikiProject Missing encyclopedic articles called Wikipedia:WikiProject Encyclopaedia Britannica. -- PBS (talk) 13:57, 17 November 2013 (UTC)

What happened to Special:WantedPages?

It says, "The following data is cached, and was last updated 05:54, 12 October 2013. A maximum of 1,000 results are available in the cache.

Updates for this page are currently disabled. Data here will not presently be refreshed.

There are no results for this report." — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2Awwsome (talk • contribs) 17:59, 14 November 2013 (UTC)

Sounds like bugzilla:15434. --AKlapper (WMF) (talk) 14:48, 18 November 2013 (UTC)

One day left to nominate, Arbitration Committee Elections December 2013

There is just over 1 day left for candidates in the December 2013 Arbcom election to Nominate themselves. There are currently only 9 candidates running for 9 open seats, and while there are often last minute nominations, I wanted to remind everyone that time is running out to nominate yourself. Nominations close at 23:59 (UTC) on Tuesday the 19th. Monty₈₄₅ 18:51, 18 November 2013 (UTC)

Wikipedia informed me that sent a password reset link.

That was more than 12 hours ago. It does not allow more than one password reset in a 24 hour period. What's going on? Is the password reset email composed and sent by real people? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 63.140.77.79 (talk) 22:40, 18 November 2013 (UTC)

Check your spam folder. If it's not there the most likely explanation is that you didn't register with an email address (possible in the past, maybe even now) or that you used an email address that you're not checking. Killiondude (talk) 22:41, 18 November 2013 (UTC)

@Killiondude, No sign of a Wikipedia password resent in Junk or Deleted. I tried to use my USER ID and Password first. A User id that I normally use was found but the password didn't work. I asked a reset using my user id and email address. Wikipedia informed that a password reset had been sent. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 63.140.77.79 (talk) 22:58, 18 November 2013 (UTC)

You can always just make a new user account. They're free. :) Killiondude (talk) 00:20, 19 November 2013 (UTC)

No password reset email more than 12 later. I tried to get another reset and found that Wikipedia will only send one reset in a 24 hour period.

What's up with that? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 63.140.77.79 (talk) 22:51, 18 November 2013 (UTC)

Wiki Education Foundation November update

The lastest Wiki Education Foundation (WEF) update is at the education noticeboard. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 12:08, 19 November 2013 (UTC)

FindArticles deadlinks

FindArticles stopped working sometime in 2012 (a bit more info at Talk:FindArticles). There are at least 20,000 links to FindArticles.com, most of them in article space, and the number is probably much higher. I checked a few and they haven't been marked with {{dead link}} or similar. They are excluded from WayBackMachine due to robots.txt; what other options do we have? John Vandenberg ^(chat) 12:20, 19 November 2013 (UTC)

A password reset email has been sent.

I posted here yesterday, but now I cannot find that earlier post / thread.

Killiondude responded yesterday.

I waited 24 hours and requested another password reset. As a result, the following: "A password reset email has been sent."

I provided my (supposed) user name (It is the one I normally use), and my email address. But no reset email has been forthcoming ... as happened yesterday.

I think I need the password reset to ask a few questions, mainly about finding the licenses of Wikipedia articles, but for other reasons too. Whether I need a password reset or not (to ask those questions), I would like to reset my password; it doesn't work.

I am not exactly a neophyte with respect to logical navigation, but I have had a hard time learning your navigation use and structure. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 209.112.217.166 (talk) 14:30, 19 November 2013 (UTC)

Hello

On russia wikipedia apears that Lana Del Rey died. It is true?--Scymso (talk) 16:20, 19 November 2013 (UTC)

Which article, and when? I can't find anything about her dying at ru:Лана_Дель_Рей. Chris857 (talk) 16:40, 19 November 2013 (UTC)

Perhaps somebody doesn't understand the title of ru:Born to Die --Redrose64 (talk) 19:39, 19 November 2013 (UTC)

How do I find the license for any given Wikipedia document or image?

I have read and bookmarked the general license, but I think each document and image should be inspected to determine that it conforms to the general license or has exceptions to the general license.

Furthermore, if I use excerpts from Wikipedia articles to explain a complicated concept, do I cite each document that used as a source of information (eg. Wikipedia, "Preconscious") and its license, whatever that might be? I am looking for a pointer and specific example. At this point, the Wikipedia discourse is difficult to navigate and understand.

Thanks.

By the way, am I posting this question in the right place? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Dubina 6 (talk • contribs) 20:23, 19 November 2013 (UTC)

About place, Wikipedia:Media copyright questions might be better, but this isn't necessarily a bad spot. All images (*should*) have licensing information on their page, for example File:Brooklyn Bridge Postdlf.jpg states it is dual-licensed GFDL 1.2/ CC-BY-SA-3.0 (in this case, in the "Permission" spot, but the tags could appear anywhere on the page). All text on Wikipedia (unless someone has released something under a more permissive license) is CC-BY-SA-3.0. For excerpts of articles, adding a link to the particular page, or at least mentioning it title, is preferred to just saying "from Wikipedia" or some such thing, because that for sure satisfies the BY (attribution) requirement of the license. That also means, if you attribute it, you could repeat the whole article. You didn't ask, but I believe all code on Wikipedia (scripts and stuff) is GFDL.

If anything is confusing, just ask. Chris857 (talk) 20:43, 19 November 2013 (UTC)

See also WP:REUSE. --Redrose64 (talk) 21:44, 19 November 2013 (UTC)

Portal:Technology for featured candidacy

• Portal:Technology

I've nominated Portal:Technology for featured candidacy.

Comments would be appreciated, at Wikipedia:Featured portal candidates/Portal:Technology.

Notifying you here, as this is the last submission as part of my initiative, the Main Page Featured Portal drive -- to get all those portals already linked from the top right of the Main Page to featured quality.

Thank you for your time,

— Cirt (talk) 04:37, 20 November 2013 (UTC)

Heh

I'm almost sorry I had to fix this. I liked the lede and "The film was... not popular enough to bring in the dough", but "the second of her last two film appearances" was a nice construction too.

Hey while it's circle time, I'd like to share this user edit history, which I came across while doing research for a matter on a different forum. This editor is not a bot or someone using automated tools to make repetitive edits. These are real content edits of different types and made steadily and with care and thought, with just a handful of objections. No edit summaries, either. I don't know what to make of this, but we may have found our King. Herostratus (talk) 15:05, 20 November 2013 (UTC)

It would be very interesting to know what topics this editor was working on. If the topics were ones that lots of other editors work on, then the lack of objections is quite an achievement... if they were more obscure, with only two or three other editors work on them, then not so much. Blueboar (talk) 15:57, 20 November 2013 (UTC)

It's quite easy to work that out, you just need to follow the clues - no admin powers are needed, despite that black blob in the image where the user name should be. --Redrose64 (talk) 18:39, 20 November 2013 (UTC)

Right, it's very easy to find the editors identity, if you want, which is OK because this is all public record; I didn't want to focus on the actual editor or talk about him behind his back (I'm confident he won't read this or anything else that's not an article though), it's just that the phenomena caught my eye. Certainly this edit history is mostly admirable. It would be nice if he used edit summaries or engaged on the occasional objection, but that's a quibble compared to his contributions.

It's just... different. Some might say this is the ideal editor, some not, but it certainly shows that there are all kinds of people in this world. Herostratus (talk) 14:08, 21 November 2013 (UTC)

Split founders from their companies

I've come across a few watch founder articles where the article is about both the person, and the company - for example, Richard Mille, Franck_Muller, Abraham-Louis Perrelet, David_Yurman. Is there a general approach on this? It seems when the person is independently notable, we create a separate article for them (e.g. Alexander McQueen, Ralph Lauren) - but what should be done in these cases? I find it rather odd to have an article about a company also classified under "Living people".--Obi-Wan Kenobi (talk) 15:51, 15 November 2013 (UTC)

I find it wrong rather than odd. If there's a single article, it should be either about the company or the person, not both. --NaBUru38 (talk) 23:04, 19 November 2013 (UTC)

I think the existing approach is a reasonable compromise in situations where either the founder or the company has few sources/isn't clearly notable. The founder is a part of the company history, and vice versa, and simply having founded a company doesn't automatically make you notable. Similar things are often done with historical events (protagonists discussed on event page), authors (books discussed on author page, or occasionally the other way round), philosophy/science (information on inventor/creator combined with information on ideas), film and TV (e.g. a gameshow contestant or reality TV participant may be discussed on the page for the TV show), etc. If we don't do this, we either end up with poorly-sourced stubs, or have to delete content. --Colapeninsula (talk) 15:03, 25 November 2013 (UTC)

the "languages" list of available wikipedia languages font has changed ! !

I have always appreciated Wikipedia's use of simple fonts that don't require platform / browser "font smoothing"

Recently I just noticed that the font used in the list of available wikipedia languages has changed that appears to now require font smoothing - - is this a new change? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.6.95.77 (talk) 05:56, 19 November 2013 (UTC)

It changed at the end of October. See Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)/Archive 120#Interlanguage links in different font. --Redrose64 (talk) 09:57, 19 November 2013 (UTC)

Overtly Using Wikipedia for Marketing

Recently Wikimedia Foundation sent a cease and desist letter to Wiki-PR for engaging in paid advocacy editing of Wikipedia. Here is the article. Oddly, I am writing a paper (little one not a doctoral or anything) on motivation and Wikipedians. One of my claims is that being paid to edit Wikipedia would be considered a crime to the community as a whole. Not to mention, such marketing is almost definitely biased. That's not my point here though. I want to ask Wikipedians their opinion of finding out someone was monetarily compensated for editing. I'm very new here, but to me its a violation in spirit, if not the letter, of Wikipedia's intent. If you would share your opinion, I'd appreciate it. Be careful what you say, you could end up in my little paper. : ) Pugsly8000 (talk) 22:04, 23 November 2013 (UTC)

On the one hand, I don't care if someone is paid. An edit should be judged on its merits, not on the motives of the person who made it. Disparaging an edit simply because someone was paid to do it, not because there's something wrong with the edit, is ad hominem. Think about most of the sources that we summarize: nearly all of them were written by people who were paid for their work. The people who wrote other encyclopedias were paid. The people who wrote the Oxford English Dictionary were paid. They were paid to maintain high standards of scholarship. There's no contradiction there. On the other hand, advocacy editing violates WP:SOAPBOX, whether the author was paid or not. The resulting bad, biased writing doesn't belong on Wikipedia, and we already have plenty in our policies and guidelines to address that. —Ben Kovitz (talk) 22:30, 23 November 2013 (UTC)

Excellent. Not what I expected. Very grateful for this response. Pugsly8000 (talk) 22:32, 23 November 2013 (UTC)

(edit conflict) Ther is a significant distinction between "being paid for editing" and 'using Wikipedia for marketing". There have been several significant policy debates on this issue recently. A distinction is often drawn between "paid editing" and "paid advocacy", Many people here have no objection to the first, but thing that the second should be prohibited or greatly restricted. I have been paid to tutor someone in how to edit Wikipedia, with over-the-shoulder examples. Would you consider that paid editing. Several libraries, museums, and universities permit, or perhaps even require, certain scholars or professionals to edit Wikipedia, within the area of their expertise, as a part of their paid employment. No one that i have heard of thinks this is unwanted or unethical. In general, if someone is paid to edit be allowed/required to do so in a neutral and helpful way, then I and many others think it perfectly acceptable.

OTOH, if someone is paid by a corporation or other entity to edit on their behalf, then there is an obvious problem with conflict of interest. But if such a person discloses the conflict in advance, and has any edits vetted by uninvolved editors, many people here (although fewer than on the previous point) still think that this is quite acceptable. So the response isn't as simple and uniform as you might have supposed. DES ^(talk) 22:48, 23 November 2013 (UTC)

One other thought: A consulting service that edits Wikipedia on behalf of people or businesses who pay for the service could actually be a good idea. Most people, when they try to represent themselves or honor their friends on Wikipedia, and most businesses when they try to represent themselves or their products on Wikipedia, do a terrible job. Typically they toss around WP:PEACOCK words, write a WP:RESUME, cite self-published sources or no sources at all, or otherwise fail to write in a scholarly, impartial tone. Sometimes that's OK if it triggers serious Wikipedians to clean up the problems; error is one of the main triggers of improvement on wikis. More often, though, the junk hangs around a long while before it gets to AfD, and it harms Wikipedia's credibility. It could make a lot of sense to hire someone who knows the rules on Wikipedia and knows how to add material that neutrally represents verifiable sources. I don't know what Wiki-PR was doing, but they bill their service as "the easy way to accurately tell your story on Wikipedia". If "accurately" means following our rules for reliable sources, they could be making Wikipedia a lot better than if their clients clicked Edit and wrote themselves. I'm not entirely sure of this, though. WP:COI contains a lot of accumulated wisdom about editors writing about themselves and people they're connected with. A hired advocate would certainly fall afoul of WP:EXTERNALREL (which, BTW, is a guideline, not a policy—and that's probably wise, too). WP:COI#Wikipedia's position addresses your question pretty directly, by suggesting a way for paid advocates to get information onto pages without editing themselves. —Ben Kovitz (talk) 23:05, 23 November 2013 (UTC)

These are excellent responses, despite not being what I expected. To clarify what I was thinking, in case it seemed I misunderstood being paid and advocacy editing...I expect Wikipedians are by and large intrinsically motivated. Being paid to do something is an extrinsic motivator and the introduction of such a motivation has proven in studies to have a crowding-out effect and lowers intrinsic motivation. What appears to be the overriding factor here is certain Wikipedian values, that I did not really consider (being pretty new here) the overarching value of a good edit, quality prose, accurate citations and the like. I truly appreciate these responses, they have led me to a better claim for my little paper. Something along the lines of Wikipedian values and the community that holds the contributors, paid or not, accountable to them. This was very beneficial to me. Thank you. Pugsly8000 (talk) 23:58, 23 November 2013 (UTC)

You are showing more understanding of the issue than many editors. Bear in mind that a lot of participants in discussions like this have no experience of the issue in other contexts. Furthermore, there is strong support for maximum liberty among many editors—let everyone edit without questioning their motives, and someone else will fix any problems. I wasn't thinking of the paid editing question at the time, but I put some thoughts regarding motivation in the third paragraph on my user page. In previous discussions, several editors have pointed out the corrosive effects that paid editing will have on volunteers when it becomes more established. Johnuniq (talk) 10:58, 24 November 2013 (UTC)

You might want to explore the workings of the Wikipedian in Residence program being promoted by the WMF Outreach:Wikipedian in Residence. Here's a case where the WMF is promoting idea that Wikipedians can get paid for being a Wikipedian and using that expertise to promote and further the interests of the institution or organization that is paying them. --Mike Cline (talk) 15:03, 24 November 2013 (UTC)

Students and forced paid advocacy editing

After seeing the horrible mess that is WP:ENB (and the output of a class I have been an ambassador for), I've been thinking. If professors and students were ever supported (or felt in any way supported by the WMF) to use primary sources against our policy of WP:PRIMARY in order to just satisfy a WMF "byte" metric (the WMF graded the success of its own program by the quantity of content added), then wouldn't the WMF itself be guilty of supporting paid advocacy editing? And wouldn't it even be worse than that? Wouldn't it even be forced paid advocacy editing? I use the word forced because I never had a choice to look at a syllabus before I took a class in university. The students are paid because they are motivated to edit by a grade (and not from their own free will) for article space additions. So if they are supported by their professors in using primary sources, which "boosts" the online prominence of their instructor's field, wouldn't this theoretical scenario I describe just be WMF-supported forced paid advocacy editing? Biosthmors (talk) pls notify me (i.e. {{U}}) while signing a reply, thx 10:39, 24 November 2013 (UTC)

Paid advocacy requires that the editor is being paid to present a particular point of view, presumably in favour of their client. Having students write article has been compared to paid editing, and there may be a case to make along those lines, but it only falls into paid advocacy if they are being required to push a particular perspective. That doesn't appear to have been the case in the courses I've seen before. - Bilby (talk) 10:48, 24 November 2013 (UTC)

This is a standard misunderstanding—no one is planning to pay a professor or a student to write an article that only mentions the good things about a particular subject, or an article which omits problems acknowledged by reliable sources. There are lots of problems with many student-written articles (copyright violations; "essay" style; last-minute copy/paste of junk), but there is nothing similar to the case of a PR company being paid to write an article where both sides understand that payment will not be forthcoming unless the article fluffs up the subject. Johnuniq (talk) 10:49, 24 November 2013 (UTC)

Bilby, for a recent and random example from a class I am involved in, I would point to this section, which does not follow WP:MEDRS or WP:PRIMARY, in my opinion. It also fails WP:CRYSTAL. It is effectively promoting the field of neuroscience, the field of the person forcing students to make these edits, in my opinion. Biosthmors (talk) pls notify me (i.e. {{U}}) while signing a reply, thx 10:54, 24 November 2013 (UTC)

I maintain that Wikipedia is the encyclopedia anyone can edit—not the encylopedia you can force anyone to edit. Biosthmors (talk) pls notify me (i.e. {{U}}) while signing a reply, thx 11:05, 24 November 2013 (UTC)

The word can in the motto should always remain voluntary, which appears to contradict the WMF view. Biosthmors (talk) pls notify me (i.e. {{U}}) while signing a reply, thx 11:07, 24 November 2013 (UTC)

Are students "paid" to take a class and do the assignments??? No in the U.S. (and many other countries) where students pay real money (mostly in the range of $500 to $3000 per course) to attend classes. The grade certifies the quality of their work--those who fail the course pay the same tuition as those who get an "A". As a regional ambassador in the WMF education program for 10 US states I have never seen a situation where a) a student was required to take a specific course and b) the instructor course required the student to write for Wikipedia with no other option available. Furthermore, unlike in Biosthmors's day, syllabi are routinely posted online, especially those in the Wikipedia Education program. Let me note that the allegation that students are being forced to 'satisfy a WMF "byte" metric' is false. The "advocacy" business is garbled--the student editors are diminishing the prestige of the field by poor work. Bottom line is that Biosthmors has mis-identified the problem (the problems are mostly poor quality edits, poor supervision, and the clustering of new edits at the end of term when assignments are due.)Rjensen (talk) 11:08, 24 November 2013 (UTC)

Students are being compensated with a grade (which is paid in my mind), for violating Wikipedia policies and guidelines, as far as I'm concerned. And this is done to promote the field of the person forcing the students to edit, it appears. Are the students allowed to be graded from the sandbox? No. This is purely disruptive, and brought to us courtesy of the WMF, in my opinion. I graduated from university in the last 10 years, FWIW. I am also a regional ambassador, FWIW, and I've also found some of your arguments at WP:ENB lately to be spurious. Biosthmors (talk) pls notify me (i.e. {{U}}) while signing a reply, thx 11:22, 24 November 2013 (UTC)

Do you have an example where students are being required to advocate for a particular position when editing? It would be unusual for a university to require students to present a particular point of view in this sort of work - I would expect the courses to require students to contribute to WP, and that in general the students will tend to be pro a particular position, but not that they would be required to advocate in any direction. I would also be very surprised to see any course requiring students to violate policies - there have been some odd examples with a hoax or two in the past, but I can't see anything like that through the education program. Unless you simply mean that students are getting a grade, in spite of violating WP policies and guidelines? - Bilby (talk) 11:30, 24 November 2013 (UTC)

Biosthmors seems to be admitting that he has been complicit (as a course ambassador) in this "violation" and he wants to blame the students or the professor for it. If he sees that a professor is in violation, I suggest that he is himself guilty if he continues to helps that professor. Rjensen (talk) 11:35, 24 November 2013 (UTC)

Cute. Do you have a potential conflict-of-interest in this conversation, by the way? I've previously expressed an interest in working for the WP:WEF but I'm disinterested until they change course. Biosthmors (talk) pls notify me (i.e. {{U}}) while signing a reply, thx 11:38, 24 November 2013 (UTC)

Bilby, it's not blatant like that. It's more subtle, and I think I've already provided a fine enough example. They're advocating for the possiblity for neuroscience to "cure diseases", which boosts the online reputation of the professors field by not following our guidelines. I am not arguing that this is motivated by anything other than ignorance. I'm just stating what the effective result is, in my opinion. Biosthmors (talk) pls notify me (i.e. {{U}}) while signing a reply, thx 11:38, 24 November 2013 (UTC)

Biosthmors says that a) classes are producing bad articles in field X (neuroscience) and b) this IMPROVES the prestige of field X. What nonsense. Rjensen (talk) 11:44, 24 November 2013 (UTC)

Unless they are tagged for their policy/guideline violations, then yes, I think they serve to boost the reputation of the field (per the logic of the statement at about minute 2 of this promotional material). If I went around and tagged everything that needs it with cleanup templates then the articles would no longer serve as subtle adverts for the field. (Thanks for throwing me under the bus for trying to participte in a "harm reduction" process, by the way.) Another example of an inappropriate student assignment would be here: Wikipedia talk:Articles for creation/Samer Hattar, IMO. A professor forced their students to edit biographies for people in their own field. Blatant violations of WP:PRIMARY/WP:RS are visible, per that discussion. Biosthmors (talk) pls notify me (i.e. {{U}}) while signing a reply, thx 11:57, 24 November 2013 (UTC)

Biosthmors seems to think 1) professors "force" their students to do things, 2) that these things are designed to promote the professor's field, and that 3) all this is hostile to the spirit of Wikipedia. Biosthmors seems to reject university professors' authority (he keeps calling professors ignorant and self serving -- and to be candid I'm a retired professor who resents the insult), while INSIDE Wikipedia he rejects the guiding principle that anyone can edit it and thinks that experts like himself should be in control. How he got to be such an expert in neuroscience is his secret. He says that he continues to be associated with a course that violates W guidelines and yet refuses to quit it. Rjensen (talk) 12:36, 24 November 2013 (UTC)

Closing this. I don't know how to describe this situation, but it's not something that's going to produce a productive result when Biosthmors is making numerous claims that are so wildly inaccurate, despite corrections from everyone else. Nyttend (talk) 13:03, 24 November 2013 (UTC)

I took off the templates. Biosthmors (talk) pls notify me (i.e. {{U}}) while signing a reply, thx 13:15, 24 November 2013 (UTC)

I'm with @Rjensen: on this. The attitude is insulting to educators, especially when they are sharing their educational plans regarding Wikimedia on project for the community to see and address. Furthermore, I have not seen much evidence that suggests students are any worse than other new contributor populations. The biggest issue appears to be the time crunch during certain period as students endeavor to get things done in a limiter period. I've been involved with setting up the education program on English Wikinews and presented about this at EduWiki 2013. When the analysis is said and done,it looks like there are no real differences. Moreover, it looks like strategies designed to assist students have a positive flow on effect in terms of assisting all new contributors. The constant harking about the random neuroscience class do not at all appear random. Rather, unless the methodology is explained to demonstrate a truly random selection process amongst all student edits that resulted in the random process being his class, then we have selectively chosen data points intended to make a point. I'd love more data from Biosthmors where the methodology is repeatedly to see if the problem he identified actually exists in a broader context. --LauraHale (talk) 13:08, 24 November 2013 (UTC)

Reclosing. Do not revert. Nyttend (talk) 13:18, 24 November 2013 (UTC)

It is an interesting discussion. I am not convinced that the education program should fall under the paid editing policy. But neither am I convinced that these are just "new editors" and thus should be dealt with like any other new editor.

I have serious concerns that a number of profs are using Wikipedia volunteers as free teaching assistants. Some are also using Wikipedia to promote their own careers / finacial position. A perfect example is a prof from U of T who brought his class of 1700 here and plans to bring his class of 50,000. The first was a disaster the second will very likely be a bigger disaster.

Wikipedia works as we have a balance of new and experience editors. Inviting another few hundred thousand new editors will upset this balance. Wikipedia improves when good edits out number bad. This could swing the balance. If we are expected to manage this increased number of new editors (and editors who do not appear to stay around to become experienced editors) than we need tool to help us manage. The first would be WP:Turnitin to deal with copyright issues. The second would be a tool to either 1) force students to use the cite template / add a PMID or to make these improvements to their refs by bot to speed review by the community. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 13:55, 24 November 2013 (UTC)

Jmh649, do you have any reason to believe that the 50k class will happen? I thought the professor backed away. Blue Rasberry (talk) 15:08, 24 November 2013 (UTC)

I read about it somewhere but have not seen any sign on Wikipedia yet. This prof likes to "fly under the radar". If one can have a class of 50,000 it has huge potential to make a lot of money for the University. Hopefully the WEF will take a lead on reporting this to the press and his dean if it happens and generates large amount of "copy and paste" issues. I assume that the dean will care little unless there is negative press as he / she I am sure also understands the potential economics. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 15:20, 24 November 2013 (UTC)

I don't know where you read the 50,000 number but that figure is nowhere close to being accurate when the enrolment of the entire campus' is only 10,000 students. Even if you lose a zero, 5000 is still an unrealistic number. What I think you're referring to is his participation in MOOC. Of course, we wouldn't know his MOOC's enrolment number. But according to that page, the course structures around multiple-choice quizzes and online modules (I'm familiar with those modules and none of them involves Wikipedia). My sources also told me that he has stopped "flying under the radar" with the 1700-student class that runs in fall-winter semesters. His graduate student does continue to run a 30-student each summer (including this past summer). OhanaUnited^{Talk page} 02:58, 25 November 2013 (UTC)

Yes it is the MOOC I refer to. Glad to hear those students will not be editing. We need to put in place proper tools first. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 03:23, 25 November 2013 (UTC)

I agree that there's an ethical issue here and I've actually wondered whether we ought to refer it to one of the university's ethics committees. The professors are being paid. The students are being paid with grades and are not editing by choice. There are people within the Wikimedia Foundation and the Wikimedia Education Foundation who are being paid to run it. In the end, the people who are left to sort out whatever problems it is causing are unpaid Wikipedians. I'm reminded of the principle of externality (e.g. the polluter pays principle), namely that there are hidden costs in running certain businesses, costs that are paid by people who did not choose to incur them. These costs should be made visible and should be paid by the organization that is causing them. I think at some point the whole idea of the education program may have to be examined along these lines, because it's causing quite a bit of resentment, and if it continues to grow, the effect on the encyclopaedia could be significant (and not entirely positive, if results so far are typical). SlimVirgin ^(talk) 14:15, 24 November 2013 (UTC)

I am very sympathetic to the concern about professors requiring students to edit Wikipedia. Done properly, it can be a positive; done poorly, it creates a mess that volunteers need to clean up. However, I am not on board with the attempt to shoehorn this practice into paid advocacy editing. That's a stretch. This sounds like a classic case of using the wrong tools. We have plenty of tools to address proper editing by students, let's not pretend it is a nail and use the hammer of paid advocacy editing to solve the problem.--S Philbrick(Talk) 15:29, 24 November 2013 (UTC)

Agree Sphil. This is an issue that needs to be dealt with differently from other ones we face. It has potential for both benefits and harms. We need to figure out how to get the most of the prior and the least of the latter. Per the WP:ENB the community appears to have the ultimate authority over the education program and thus we should look at drafting some guidelines / policies on how to deal with it. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 15:36, 24 November 2013 (UTC)

I hadn't read any of the ENB discussion prior to today. Prompted by SandyGeorgia, I read much of it today. I see the challenges.--S Philbrick(Talk) 22:48, 24 November 2013 (UTC)

I think talking of "paid" causes confusion. We have a degree of compulsion and reward. There are course marks involved, even if sometimes there are alternative ways of earning them. Students don't get to pick their syllabus, even if they can view it online prior to admission. And once you've started 1st-year, the subsequent years' syllabus may change and you have no option but to continue. Nobody picked a University because of one module. Many students aren't given an option to avoid WP editing in their course.

Also "advocacy" isn't always the issue. I can think of one example: Education Program:Case Western Reserve University/ANTH 302 Darwinian Medicine (Fall 2013). Darwinian medicine is controversial. There are some diseases where a proposed evolutionary origin (confers benefit to the organism overall) is accepted, but often this is little more than speculation similar to evolutionary psychology. So there are some academic disciplines where it may be all too easy to unbalance the WP:WEIGHT of our articles if dozens of students were asked to add sections on their prof's pet theory. Even for a non-controversial subject, the balance of an article can be upset if the edits are directed towards one aspect rather than improving the whole.

But mostly I think the biggest problem is that in many classes the students are being compelled to edit beyond their abilities, and those instructing them are not Wikipedians. And I believe this overstretching occurs more than in volunteer newbies. Newbies just don't turn up and try to write an entire article on a really hard scientific subject over the space of 10 days, and then disappear never to be seen again. Colin°^Talk 16:55, 24 November 2013 (UTC)

Well-said.--S Philbrick(Talk) 14:54, 25 November 2013 (UTC)

" Students are being compensated with a grade (which is paid in my mind) "

— Biosthmors

I strongly disagree with this definition of the word "paid". Axl ¤ [Talk] 15:11, 25 November 2013 (UTC)

I agree. That said, Biosthmors has identified an interesting issue; that there is an element of coercion in some cases. I'm not yet sure how we the community should respond. I don't like the idea of equating it with paid editing and applying the same responses we would to paid editing, but we ought to think though how we should respond.--S Philbrick(Talk) 15:23, 25 November 2013 (UTC)

Maybe it's because my parents paid me for good grades to help with my rent when I was in university, that this is a near equivalence in my mind. Biosthmors (talk) pls notify me (i.e. {{U}}) while signing a reply, thx 15:26, 25 November 2013 (UTC)

"Unconfirmed" editors becoming "autoconfirmed" by editing pages "pending changes"?

Would an unconfirmed editor become "autoconfirmed" if they edit pages whose revisions are approved or rejected? Normally, four days and ten days would be enough, but pending changes is changing things around. --George Ho (talk) 04:30, 26 November 2013 (UTC)

Update from Wiki Education Foundation 25 November 2013

There is a new update from the Wiki Education Foundation at the Education Noticeboard. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 04:39, 26 November 2013 (UTC)

Notion Capital

Notion Capital was recently deleted by PROD, due to notability concerns. User:GiantSnowman kindly userfied the article at my request, at User:Pigsonthewing/Notion Capital where I have improved it. It is now ready for publication, and I believe that our notability requirements are satisfied by coverage by TechCrunch, the Wall Street Journal, the Financial Times and more. I declare an interest, as I have a professional relationship with Norton. I therefore invite and request an uninvolved editor to review the article and move it back to its original location. It may then be sensible, if it had any content, for an admin to undelete the original talk page. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 16:02, 23 November 2013 (UTC)

You might want to ping WP:WikiProject Cooperation if they're still active, this is right up their alley. Mark Arsten (talk) 02:46, 24 November 2013 (UTC)

Done, thank you. It's amazing that there are always new corners of Wikipedia, for even an experienced editor to uncover. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 16:52, 24 November 2013 (UTC)

It seems there're no active editors watching there. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 17:48, 26 November 2013 (UTC)

Request to move an article?

Today I introduced Wikipedia to about 50 people at the World Health Organization in a talk, and I received a request to help move the ePORTUGUÊSe page (EPortuguêse) to that exact spelling. Is that possible? I advised people at WHO of WP:COI and other core polices/guidelines. Thanks. Biosthmors (talk) pls notify me (i.e. {{U}}) while signing a reply, thx 16:24, 25 November 2013 (UTC)

I see it noted that the requested destination on the MediaWiki talk:Titleblacklist. I think there was some sort of inappropriate edit-warring-like moves back and forth in the history, FWIW. Thanks. Biosthmors (talk) pls notify me (i.e. {{U}}) while signing a reply, thx 16:27, 25 November 2013 (UTC)

Bios. The correct procedure would be to conduct a requested move discussion WP:RM. That said, a previous RM in 2012 closed with the current name and there appears to be an MOS problem with the requested title. I suspect another RM would just close with the article staying at its current title. --Mike Cline (talk) 16:42, 25 November 2013 (UTC)

I rather think that the move was reverted (twice) was because the letter S was omitted (both times). See the move logs for EPortuguêse and EPORTUGUÊe. --Redrose64 (talk) 17:30, 25 November 2013 (UTC)

I've created a redirect. This also means that the URL https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ePORTUGUÊSe is valid. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 17:59, 26 November 2013 (UTC)

Group editing in a sandbox. Licensing?

I am posting here to follow-up for a professor who I've prevously helped with a Wikipedia assignment. We had an email exchange, yesterday I think, where I mentioned that I don't think it's an ideal situation when students have an assignment in a mandatory class that requires them to edit Wikipedia articles, because I think this contradicts the voluntary can in the "anyone can edit" motto. So I proposed to a professor that they might let their class edit in the sandboxes, get their grades there, and only move over material if they 1) felt comfortable doing so and 2) if the content followed Wikipedia's policies and guidelines. The professor said they might be working in groups, and they asked me if 1 or 2 students in a group of 4 did not want the material to go live, what might happen then. Could another student legally move it over live, even if the other student did not like the idea, because the text had already been released CC-BY-SA? Thanks. Biosthmors (talk) pls notify me (i.e. {{U}}) while signing a reply, thx 17:34, 24 November 2013 (UTC)

My guess is that if any of the 4 students could move the text over if they were willing, because my sandbox says it is CC-BY-SA at the bottom. If someone could reply and affirm this, I'll explain this to the professor. Thanks. Biosthmors (talk) pls notify me (i.e. {{U}}) while signing a reply, thx 17:46, 24 November 2013 (UTC)

WP:Group accounts are forbidden. --Redrose64 (talk) 19:07, 24 November 2013 (UTC)

I think the idea was that the four students in the group all contributed to the sandbox article with their four individual accounts, and whether one of those contributors could somehow prevent another of those contributors (or anyone else) from moving or copying the text to the live article. A move would certainly be fine from a licensing perspective; copy-and-pasting to an existing article is a little more tricky (but there are instructions). Anomie⚔ 20:11, 24 November 2013 (UTC)

The relevant guideline is WP:Copying within Wikipedia. The methods in WP:Merge and delete may be relevant, as the sandboxes are outside article space. While taking from another user's sandbox without permission is considered to be impolite, anyone can reuse its text, subject to CWW and/or WP:Reusing Wikipedia content. Flatscan (talk) 05:12, 25 November 2013 (UTC)

Yes, thanks Anomie. Sorry Redrose for not being more clear. Biosthmors (talk) pls notify me (i.e. {{U}}) while signing a reply, thx 20:13, 24 November 2013 (UTC)

One problem is that copying an article to a sandbox (in preparation for improvement), then editing it, is essentially a fork. If no one edits the real article while the students are editing the copy, there isn't an issue, at the end, of overwriting the official article with the sandbox version. But if the official article has changed in the meantime, then there is a potential conflict. At that point, it might be best to ask (via the article talk page) for an experienced Wikipedia editor to decide what is valuable/useful in the sandbox version, and to take responsibility for modifying the official article.

Another problem is that students editing in a sandbox get no feedback from other editors. That does protect them from aggressive reverts, but it also isolates them from any discussions about questionable content changes. (In some courses, the social interaction aspects of Wikipedia - how consensus can be achieved in a crowd-sourcing environment - is a large part of the rationale for Wikipedia assignments, where students are expected to discuss their interactions.) -- John Broughton (♫♫) 22:27, 24 November 2013 (UTC)

Yet another argument in favor of a Draft space; user space drafts are unlikely to be seen by other editors, thus none of the feedback. Not a big deal when it is an experienced editor working on a draft, but, as you note, cuts out an important element of the experience if done by a new editor. In contrast, if done in a draft space, some editors might gravitate toward reviewing material in that space.--S Philbrick(Talk) 15:17, 25 November 2013 (UTC)

I think the examples cited on WP:ENB kind of shatter the argument for "going live" in certain scenaiors, because many students broke policies and guidelines in doing so. And the class wasn't structured to allow grading based upon actually following Wikipedia's suggestions (or from the sandbox), similar to the work of the 2012 class: User:Biosthmors/Intro Neuro. Sigh... This is a very difficult class, which I wish would just stop editing Wikipedia. I've spent many hours trying to reduce the harm done by the class, but I'm tired of the serious policy/guideline violations. Biosthmors (talk) pls notify me (i.e. {{U}}) while signing a reply, thx 15:39, 25 November 2013 (UTC)

Biosthmors I think your proposal works well in cases where the group is starting an article from scratch, though I agree that some challenges have been identified if their goal is to improve an existing article.--S Philbrick(Talk) 15:19, 25 November 2013 (UTC)

If your colleague and or their students don't want the work published (why?), they should set up a local instance of MediaWiki. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 17:55, 26 November 2013 (UTC)

You never had much group work inflicted on you in school, did you? There are several reasons that one might not want to have something that you contributed to be published, including a strong conviction that your teammates had seriously screwed it up. WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:38, 26 November 2013 (UTC)

Quinn Archer

Quinn Archer has done NOTHING so far. That's a very interesting article about self-promotion and/or some Major record label promotion. And nobody over here making something?! 81.62.214.135 (talk) 18:13, 27 November 2013 (UTC)

• finally Blump007 (talk) 09:07, 28 November 2013 (UTC)

Visor WikiProject?

I made the Talk:Visor page say {{WikiProject Physics|class=stub|importance=low}} but perhaps that is not quite right. Please check this out for me.--DThomsen8 (talk) 13:13, 26 November 2013 (UTC)

Why do you think that it's wrong? --Redrose64 (talk) 15:07, 26 November 2013 (UTC)

Not wrong so much as insufficient, related to tools and even space exploration.--DThomsen8 (talk) 19:43, 28 November 2013 (UTC)

Wiki Education Foundation Executive Director job posting

The Wiki Education Foundation is now accepting applications for the post of Executive Director. Details of the job, and how to apply, can be found here. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 22:41, 30 November 2013 (UTC)

Weird case of newbie interest in Ansan Street Arts Festival

Ansan Street Arts Festival is an article about a local festival in Korea, a minor notable event created by my students half a year ago. The weird thing is that shortly after the assignment ended, around June/July this year, the article started getting edited by newbies - just look at the history and the amount of "Tag: new editor getting started". There is no pattern among the newbies: some vandals, some one edits, and some who went on to make a number more edits. I am reasonably certain those are not socks; it is just... weird that this article is attracting so many newbies. It is not linked from any newbie welcome page, so what's going on? I am watching 5k articles, including dozens created by students, I am not seeing such a pattern anywhere else. Is it used by some wiki-teacher during workshops? Is it linked on some learn-how-to-edit-Wikipedia external site? Any ideas? --_{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here} 05:51, 27 November 2013 (UTC)

It may be that it is being included in the suggestions given by WP:GettingStarted. The tag "new editor getting started" is added to edits prompted by that extension. Anomie⚔ 13:22, 27 November 2013 (UTC)

Yes, Anomie is correct. You can see this at Special:GettingStarted -- this is a slightly old version we'll be deprecating soon, but the gist will remain the same. In this case, Ansan Street Arts Festival is part of the copyediting category, which is quite large at 2,600+. We filter articles in that category for length, no BLPs, and some other criteria, then we deliver random selections to new editors. You can see all these edits by using the tag filter 'gettingstarted edit' on RecentChanges. If you're interested in the research documenting all our experimentation with suggestions for new editors, it's available at Research:Onboarding new Wikipedians on Meta. If you think any particular article doesn't actually need more copyediting, remove the copyediting banner and the article will no longer be served as a suggestion for that task. Steven Walling (WMF) • talk 07:47, 2 December 2013 (UTC)

Is it time for us to say something about Mass Surveillance?

In the wake of the Edward Snowden revelations, we've seen statements from groups like the [4] and the EFF. In addition, the American Libraries Association has made a statement also.

Now, Jimmy Wales has made his own statement on the subject, though not in a formal capacity.

People care what the Wikipedia community has to say (remember SOPA). Should we make some sort of statement on this matter, or keep an official silence? IF we wanted to say something, what should be said? --HectorMoffet (talk) 04:19, 2 December 2013 (UTC)

I opposed the SOPA blackout because I don't want Wikipedia to take any political positions ever. The overwhelming consensus in favor of the blackout depended on the idea that SOPA was a threat to the very existence of Wikipedia. That exceptional circumstance doesn't exist here. Wikipedia as an entity should remain neutral. Ntsimp (talk) 15:56, 2 December 2013 (UTC)

Request an account process needs help

Hello everyone, I'm Callanecc, an administrator on account creation interface. Recently, our project has had an increased backlog in getting accounts for new users. Our numbers are currently over 250 people waiting for accounts on the English Wikipedia. If you could even spare a moment to do a few requests a day to help us clear this backlog, that would go a long way to encouraging new editors to participate with an account. If this interests you and you're willing to help, and you match the following description, then please do apply! Ideal users are:

• Identified to the Wikimedia Foundation or are willing and able to identify
• In good standing with no recent blocks or other sanctions
• Understand and are able to apply the username policy
• Have worked with new contributors
• Keep personal information confidential
• Please see the full list of requirements for more information

We have a very friendly team to help you get started, we also have a private IRC channel where you can ask questions or get help with difficult account requests. If you have any questions for us or about the process, feel free to ask at the talkpage. If you can help out, we would greatly appreciate it. For the ACC team,

Request for comment

Due to no consensus on a previous discussion re: article naming, there is a second discussion open about moving Australia national association football team to Australia men's national association football team. We are seeking outside input. Contributions to the discussion is much appreciated. Thank you. Hmlarson (talk) 01:33, 5 December 2013 (UTC)

help w my archives

Not sure where to ask about this. My talk-page auto-archive has exceeded 200k, which evidently is a problem. Could someone here move the page history of my talk page, through Sept (that is, Jul, Aug, Sept of this year) to User talk:Kwamikagami/Archive 22? I'll then paste in the corresponding threads from the archive. (I'd like to keep the threads with their edit history.) Then at the end of this month I'll move the rest of my talk-page history to a separate archive number. — kwami (talk) 04:45, 6 December 2013 (UTC)

I will try (no experience with history splitting but let's see how it goes). PrimeHunter (talk) 05:08, 6 December 2013 (UTC)

Done (hopefully). PrimeHunter (talk) 05:25, 6 December 2013 (UTC)

Thank you! Most of Sept. 30 got left behind, perhaps because of a time-zone difference? So I left a note in the archive that that day's edit history will be in the next archive. No biggie. — kwami (talk) 05:57, 6 December 2013 (UTC)

I tried to split by UTC time but forgot that it was summer time in September, so the UTC difference to my own time zone was two hours in September instead of the current one hour. PrimeHunter (talk) 12:39, 6 December 2013 (UTC)

Picture

I've made this picture on a flight from Amsterdam to John F. Kennedy Airport between Nova Scotia and the airport in New York. I took this picture half an hour after I took one overhere so it must be somewhere between Cape Cod and New York but I really can't find this place. Does anybody have any idea? - Supercarwaar (talk) 20:06, 6 December 2013 (UTC)

Have you asked at the Commons help desk? I wonder if that might be a better forum. Shawn in Montreal (talk) 20:10, 6 December 2013 (UTC)

O, I didn't know that place existed, thank you - Supercarwaar (talk) 20:12, 6 December 2013 (UTC)

Teahouse and Adventures

Is there some way that the bots that post the invitations can be programmed to avoid the talk pages of blocked users? I've seen quite a few cases where these invitations have appeared after I've indeffed the user. It looks silly to invite them to something they can't get at (and in some cases shouldn't be allowed anywhere near...). Peridon (talk) 21:35, 11 December 2013 (UTC)

Note This has been mentioned before here: WT:Teahouse/Archive 7#Could host bot be programmed not to post invites on pages of blocked users.3F. Regards, -- Ross Hill • Talk • Need Help? • 21:54, 11 December 2013 (UTC)

Come to think of it, I'm not seeing the Teahouse one so much. The Adventure bot needs sorting, though. Peridon (talk) 20:48, 12 December 2013 (UTC)

Protection of the Race and Intelligence Talk Page

The talk page has been semi-protected for months, in what is almost as close to a blatant violation of WP:PROTECTION as is possible. That policy states:

"Talk pages are not usually protected, and are only semi-protected for a limited duration in the most severe cases of vandalism."

Now, that talk page has been semiprotected for months, and from what I could gather it was primarily about sockpuppet concerns. Clearly, it's not in line with standard policy. I hereby request the talk page be unlocked. If not, WP:PROTECTION should be edited in line with a significant change in Wikipedia protection policy.

P.S. I don't know if this is the right place to post such a comment. Given that it is only a tiny proportion of talk pages that are supposed to be protected, and then only a small proportion of the time, it may be that there is no standard place. 211.31.199.104 (talk) 09:07, 10 December 2013 (UTC)

Looking at the history, this happened in [5] and was for one month, after some provocation. This may indeed be excessive, but at least it is supposed to come to an end soon (December 13). I doubt we would get resolve for action before then. Wnt (talk) 00:17, 11 December 2013 (UTC)

Not disagreeing with anything you said, but I'm pretty sure it was protected for a period shortly before then. 211.31.199.104 (talk) 08:00, 11 December 2013 (UTC)

The protection log is publically viewable. --Redrose64 (talk) 15:54, 11 December 2013 (UTC)

That's too much, both in terms of total time and the October to January span. At the very least it should be possible to conduct a 30-day RFC and allow IP editors to comment in them without having to specially suspend the protection for the occasion. Otherwise they have been completely thrown out, not just marginalized. Wnt (talk) 22:01, 11 December 2013 (UTC)

I'm not commenting on the protection of that specific talk page, but total period of protection (about 5 months of non continous protection) doesn't exactly seem that long. Consider [6] which has been protected for over 18 months now and had other long periods of protection before then. I also remember seeing at least one other similar case for a popstar or some other celebrity popular with teenagers but can't find it in Category:Semi-protected talk pages, but then again JB isn't there either.

But from there, you can find that there's also [7] which will be reaching 2 years in February and [8] now well over 30 months of continious semi protection and possibly longer protected than unprotected (although I think part of this time the article didn't exist). Even [9] while expiring soon and only 6 months, would be longer than the R&I.

And while these may be obvious and unsurprising, others are more surprising (note I'm not saying they are undeserved, at least one of them seems to have good reasons) [10] (probably only about 1 year unprotected since March 2008) and [11] (just reached its 6 month anniversary and funnily enough the talk pages comments the IP was trying to remove which I think were the cause of the protection were also from an IP) and [12] (18 months and counting although not totally continous).

Then there's ones like [13], (I guess perhaps spambots have trouble distinguishing a wikipedia article talk page from a Vbulletin forum itself) or [14] (I don't want to even bother speculating on that one and note if you're not seeing the problematic edits it's probably because they were deleted [15]).

Of course there's also cases like [16] and all the other abortion related ones where the protection for 3 years was an arbcom remedy Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case/Abortion#IP editing prohibited.

In other words, 6 months of more of semi protection of talk pages is not exactly unheard of. Ultimately the lack of responses here and I think I recall at least one other discussion somewhere where the issue was raised but the discussion quickly died down, suggests to me this aspect of policy is accepted or at least not something people care enough to discuss in depth. You're right that the specific wording of our protection policy doesn't really cover these cases, if you feel it matters that much I suggest you take it to the talk page, bearing in mind since our policies aren't meant to be too bureaucratic it will probably just be a loosening of the wording to cover cases of longer semi protection of talk pages.

This doesn't of course mean that each of these cases or all cases of long semi protection of a talk page are justified, in one particularly example here (Talk:Smelting), I'm not totally sure it was necessary. Of course, I may be missing something and to be honest I don't really care enough to find out. If you do come across any particular examples of talk page protection you feel are unjustified, you're welcome to appeal them via the normal avenues.

Nil Einne (talk) 14:57, 14 December 2013 (UTC)

Question about Translations

I had no idea where to pose this question so if someone could help direct me I'd be grateful. I am going through The Handbook of Russian Literature by Victor Terras and comparing the Russian Wikipedia versions of Russian authors with the English Wikipedia. No surprise, the Russian versions are almost always much more complete. (The same probably could be said of English authors on Russian Wikipedia). I've started with Valery Bryusov...the corresponding Russian version is an FA. I'd like to do this translation and recreate the FA article in my sandbox. When finished...how do I proceed? There is nothing wrong with the English version, just paltry compared to the Russian...do I just replace the entire thing with the translated Russian version? Thanks for direction and advice, this will be my first article, I'm excited to get started! SooshiRama (talk) 16:23, 11 December 2013 (UTC)

OK - as no-one better informed has posted... I'd suggest doing a translation in your user space (User:SooshiRama/Experiment or whatever you prefer), and then post a link to it on the talk page of the poor article (with a explanation). Contact some of the main editors of the page as well. (Not the ones that have only done things to categories, or corrected typos - they won't be interested.) Don't just replace the current article. That gets people's backs up. Don't forget that you should acknowledge the Russian article as a source. If you don't, it could upset the copyright people. Most things here on Wikipedia is, confusingly, free to use AND copyright. The reuse requires acknowledgement. We don't always get it - one of my scanty content contribs has appeared translated into Italian without an acknowledgement (sigh...). Doesn't really worry me, but some people are more possessive. Peridon (talk) 20:59, 12 December 2013 (UTC)

Good call. That sounds like a sound route to take. I was going to, of course, reference the original Russian version but had not thought to contact the main editors and put a link to my experiment or sandbox on the talk page. Thanks for the advice...much appreciated. SooshiRama (talk) 18:16, 13 December 2013 (UTC)

@SooshiRama: See Wikipedia:Translation (and see Wikipedia:Translate us for translating from the English Wikipedia to other languages). Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 21:50, 13 December 2013 (UTC)

Swedish wikipedia should be shut down.

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

---

I am swedish, and wikipedia is one of the main sources I turn to whenever I need to learn something.

However, I always turn to the english version.

The people involved in the swedish version are compromised. We're talking about seriously sick people.

The original article regarding racism at swedish wikipedia was short. It was correct and to the point. http://sv.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Rasism&oldid=14239

The current article is long, ambigous and more or less include everyone as a racist. Any attempts to change it has so far ended up in bans.

Swedish wikipedia is a joke, the people involved compromised. I ask you to close it down. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 213.64.182.124 (talk) 05:40, 15 December 2013 (UTC)

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

Google news archive search?

Hey, I just noticed today that Google News archive search -- the function that allowed us to search for WP:RS going back decades, has been abruptly killed off. If so, this is going to have a big impact on how we find RS. Has anyone else noticed this -- or know of some way that it's still available via some different means? Shawn in Montreal (talk) 16:29, 6 December 2013 (UTC)

Does this not work? PS. Are you referring to how the link {{Find sources}} appears broken? Chris857 (talk) 16:32, 6 December 2013 (UTC)

Thanks Chris. The two are indeed related, I believe. With that first link (which is a new interface in my experience), neither the "anytime" nor custom dates seem to take the search past one month. Which means that the {{Find sources}} is going to have to be changed -- and will be a vastly less powerful search tool, apparently limited to 30 day old Gnews searches only? If so, a bad day for our efforts here to verify notability (and on a personal note, I'm so disappointed at Google for continuing to kill of valuable online tools at their whim). Shawn in Montreal (talk) 16:55, 6 December 2013 (UTC)

Apparently this was foretold a while back, in a blog post related more to genealogy searches. Shawn in Montreal (talk) 17:19, 6 December 2013 (UTC)

This page at Google purports to explain how to search for older news content using the standard web search: Find news archive content Even assuming that there were valid reasons to change the existing interface, I have no idea why they've made it hard to find the explanation, but anyway: it seems that there will no longer an easy way to limit searches to newspaper content, but you can limit searches to Google-scanned newspapers by adding the following parameter to a web search: site:google.com/newspapers . We will evidently have to adjust the "find sources" template to deal with this most unwelcome change.--Arxiloxos (talk) 17:38, 6 December 2013 (UTC)

Oh, yes, I see that does work, if one pastes site:google.com/newspapers into any web search. At least for now. Thank you very much. --Shawn in Montreal (talk) 18:24, 6 December 2013 (UTC)

• I've left a {{sudo}} request at Template talk:Find sources multi#Please update Google news archive search link so hopefully this will be fixed in the near future. Best. 64.40.54.208 (talk) 02:43, 9 December 2013 (UTC)

As of right now, if you use Chrsi857's link and use the "date added" parameter, you can still get old news archives. But it is frustrating that Google, of all companies, keeps coming up with ways to frustrate the ability to find information. Resolute 02:51, 9 December 2013 (UTC)

• Worse than I thought I just tried searching for Donald Howard Menzel which used to bring up more than 100 results.
  • Using Chrsi857's link news.google.com/news/advanced_news_search?as_drrb=a&q=%22Donald+Howard+Menzel%22 came up with no results.
  • Using the meta news search www.google.com/search?tbm=nws&btnmeta_news_search=1&q=%22Donald+Howard+Menzel%22 came up with no results.
  • Using Google's news archive www.google.com/search?q=%22Donald+Howard+Menzel%22+site%3Agoogle.com%2Fnewspapers gave only 4 results.

We need a better solution. 64.40.54.208 (talk) 05:10, 9 December 2013 (UTC)

Adding Google's new news search no longer covers newspaper archives like the New York Times and doesn't cover newspaper archiving services such as NewsLibrary and others. So it misses almost everything. 64.40.54.208 (talk) 06:03, 9 December 2013 (UTC)

Depends on how you do the parameters. It's still there, just harder to get to. On your first link, I changed it to "Donald Menzel" and added a date range of 01/01/1900 - 01/01/2000 and got this. Including NYT and other paid archives. Resolute 14:37, 9 December 2013 (UTC)

I love how Google has decided the "anytime" search option does not automatically include, well, anytime. I've tried the advance search option using date parameters for a person's name, one that I'd searched for quite recently, and it's definitely missing stuff, now. But I suppose this will have to do for now. thanks, Shawn in Montreal (talk) 15:34, 9 December 2013 (UTC)

If the actual data is still available, and only the search interface is damaged, maybe this can be compensated for by writing some kind of php or python script to put on a web site that would let users specify the search they want, it goes through and pulls out data from Google with all the tricks you people can think up, then throws out the unwanted links and delivers a polished set? Is that possible? Wnt (talk) 23:16, 9 December 2013 (UTC)

It might be possible using multiple searches using <searchterm> site:<NameOfArchive> and fill in <NameOfArchive> with all the sites listed at Wikipedia:List of online newspaper archives. But there are hundreds of those and it might violate Google's terms of use. Google is fairly picky about automated searches. That's why CorenSearchBot (talk · contribs) was down for a year. 64.40.54.29 (talk) 03:26, 10 December 2013 (UTC)

I suppose if need be, it could be peer-to-peer software, some, say, Firefox plug-in that conducts each one of the hundreds of searches using a different user's browser as the user agent. They'd be hard pressed to find a way to block that! Wnt (talk) 04:15, 10 December 2013 (UTC)

@Resolute. thanks for the help. Unfortunately that search finds a lot of people other than the astronomer and it missed this result from the NYT archives. So it appears to need some tweaking. I'll keep playing with it to see if I can get something better. Thanks. 64.40.54.29 (talk) 03:43, 10 December 2013 (UTC)

• Another thought just occured to me. Back in the mid 90s, spiders/web crawlers/search engines used to sell their databases to each other to be more complete. I'm not sure if that still happens, but if so perhaps we could purchase their news archive database for internal use. Just a thought. 64.40.54.29 (talk) 03:55, 10 December 2013 (UTC)
• There's a related thread at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Horse racing#The end of Google news archive searches? --Redrose64 (talk) 17:49, 10 December 2013 (UTC)
• No solution available After lots and lots of thorough testing I've come to the conclusion that there is no solution to this problem. The date added fix suggested above and at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Horse racing#The end of Google news archive searches? only appeared to work because it removed the quotes from the search string, thus making a much broader search. I tested this with a number of browsers and different configurations and the results were the same. I welcome others to look in to this to see if I've missed something. 64.40.54.87 (talk) 05:58, 11 December 2013 (UTC)
• I've removed the Google News search link from {{find sources}}, {{find sources 2}}, {{find sources 3}} and {{find sources 4}} per the discussion here. That should remove the link from all the AfD discussions and article talk pages, etc. If anyone finds away around this, let me know and I can add the links back in. — Mr. Stradivarius ^{♪ talk ♪} 02:14, 15 December 2013 (UTC)

@Mr. Stradivarius: thanks for the help. As soon as I can find a solution, I'll ask for the template to be updated. Best. 64.40.54.34 (talk) 04:04, 15 December 2013 (UTC)

An open letter to Google

At this point I'm so frustrated with Google that I'm at my wits end. This cripples much of our referencing ability and significantly harms our efforts as a community to write verifiable content. So if anybody else is as upset as I am, feel free to start drafting an open letter to Google voicing our dissatisfaction. Yeah, I know, it won't do any good, but "I'm as mad as hell, and I'm not going to take this anymore!" 64.40.54.87 (talk) 06:09, 11 December 2013 (UTC)

Dear Eric Schmidt, Larry Page, Sergey Brin and Google Inc.

"Don't be evil." Early in your company's history you used these words to express the idea that it would be better for your company and shareholders to "help the world" rather than go for short term gains. Your recent change to your Google news search that restricts search results to the last 30 days has had a significantly negative impact on the volunteers that make up the Wikipedia community. We rely heavily on newspaper articles to ensure that our content is verifiable using reliable sources, many of which come from the news outlets around the world. In making this change, you have significantly restricted our ability to find these sources of news. This not only affects our project, but also impacts the millions of readers that have come to rely on the information in our articles. We, the community of volunteers that make up Wikipedia, wish to express our deep dissatisfaction with your recent changes and encourage you to work with our community to find a solution to this problem.

Sincerely, the undersigned.

I'm too upset to just sit here, so I had to write a draft at the very least. If somebody wants to copy this to WP:An open letter to Goolge so that others can work on it, it would be much appreciated. 64.40.54.87 (talk) 06:59, 11 December 2013 (UTC)

(Better, WP:An open letter to Google.) Thnidu (talk) 00:55, 12 December 2013 (UTC)

Am I missing something? As far as I can tell, one can still set custom ranges for news. -- Ross Hill • Talk • Need Help? • 02:16, 12 December 2013 (UTC)

@Ross Hill: please try this. Using the example from above, go to Google and search for "Donald Howard Menzel" with quotes, then set the custom date range and search again, you'll see that Donald Howard Menzel is no longer in quotes. Add quotes to that search with the custom dates. When I did this, I got zero results. Before, searching for Donald Howard Menzel gave over 100 results. I tried this with several notable scientists from the 1930s, 40s & 50s and they all came back with zero results when using quotes. When searching without the quotes, there were many results but none of them were for the astronomer Donald Howard Menzel (or the other scientists I searched for). If you are able to get a search result that includes the scientist Donald Howard Menzel, I would be very happy to know how you did it. Thanks very much. 64.40.54.139 (talk) 02:49, 12 December 2013 (UTC)

• Adding OK, I've modified template sandbox {{X10}} to be a Google news search using the date paramters set to 1900 → 2000 and also to include quotes. You can test it out by using {{X10|<SearchTerm>}}. For example, to search for Donald Howard Menzel I use {{X10|Donald Howard Menzel}} and I get this → link. If somebody is able to update {{X10}} to actualy give the results it used to before Google crippled it, it would be much appreciated. Thanks. 64.40.54.139 (talk) 05:42, 12 December 2013 (UTC)

• Another illustration that using 'custom range' on Google News fails to find articles even from as recently as the 2000s that the archive option found only a couple of weeks ago: on 1 December I added some referenced material to The Peacocks (Woking), which had been nominated for deletion. Refs 1-2 came from a Google Books search; refs 3-5 are news articles from 2008-2010 found from a Google News Archive search for "Peacocks" Woking, as made pretty clear from my comment dated 1 December on Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/The Peacocks (Woking). But now searching Google News with a custom date range gives no news hits before this week, failing to show even the BBC News story from 2010. Qwfp (talk) 21:19, 13 December 2013 (UTC)

• Hi, my name is Matt and I am a Google Community Manager for Google News. We are performing a much needed facelift on our News Archive search function as we swap out an old system for an improved one. We are focusing engineering resources on building this new system, and as a result, for the next several months users will only be able to access archived stories through Google Search, as explained in our Help Center Article. We recognize that Wikipedians regard News Archive as a valuable resource and apologize for any inconvenience caused as we carry out this work. For further help, please refer to the Google News forum. Matt Bariletti - Community Manager (talk) 21:20, 17 December 2013 (UTC)
  • Matt, I appreciate the information, but it would be even more helpful if Google were to post their plans to eventually restore the News Archive search on Google News itself. The Help Center doesn't say anything about the News Archive search being restores after any system upgrade, and the Google News forum doesn't say anything about the removal of the Archive search at all. --Metropolitan90 (talk) 05:25, 18 December 2013 (UTC)

@Metropolitan90: one of these links should get you what you want [17], [18], [19] they should all end up at the same place at Google They say essentially the same thing that Matt said. That the news search will be down for several months, but will eventually come back after it has been upgraded. 64.40.54.251 (talk) 06:24, 19 December 2013 (UTC)

Thanks, 64.40. --Metropolitan90 (talk) 15:05, 19 December 2013 (UTC)

• Hi everyone, My name is Stacie Chan and I'm on the Google News team. I wanted to provide a quick update: we’ve re-enabled archives search! Our team listened to your feedback, and was hard at work to bring you an even better archive experience. We know how valuable the News Archives are to Wikipedians, so we appreciate your patience as we updated the tool. You can now browse back in time to 2003. If you have any questions, please check out our Google News Help Forum.

Category:Wikipedians on Editor review

What was the CFD that led to the deletion of this category? The deletion reason this bot gave is a redlink... TeleComNasSprVen (talk • contribs) 18:54, 12 December 2013 (UTC)

I don't know why the bot added that broken link, but looking at the history of Category:Wikipedians on editor review, it looks like the capitalized title was moved at that time. Chris857 (talk) 19:03, 12 December 2013 (UTC)

Yeah... the category in question was not really deleted... it was moved to a different title with corrected capitalization. Moves like that are usually non-contentious, so there was probably no CFD discussion (note: if you object to the move, or think it needs discussion, you can always start one). Blueboar (talk) 16:51, 18 December 2013 (UTC)

DYK needs help

Did you know, the process whereby new articles are showcased on the front page of Wikipedia, is massively backlogged and could really use more editors both to review articles and to promote articles to the preparation areas to go into the queue. The queue and preparation areas have been operating on only one set of hooks per cycle for the past week or so, causing the bot making the updates to partially break down. If you can help out, please do. -Kieran (talk) 06:20, 19 December 2013 (UTC)

"អំពី Wikipedia" in en-CA

I have the language of the menus set as en-CA (Canadian English) in my preferences. For some reason, this changes what says "About Wikipedia" in the other two versions of English to "អំពី Wikipedia", which apparently means "About Wikipedia" in Khmer. This shows up both on the side menu and at the bottom of the page. The en and en-GB versions are normal. Cloudlet (talk) 07:38, 19 December 2013 (UTC)

Ah, some months ago a Khmer translator accidentally translated a number of messages using the wrong language codes. This one was not fixed until very recently (a few days ago), and the translations update hasn't run since. The problem will be fixed soon. --Yair rand (talk) 10:06, 19 December 2013 (UTC)

2013–14 Euroleague

Could someone fix it? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 79.103.125.139 (talk) 22:44, 19 December 2013 (UTC)

I suggest you post at Talk:2013–14 Euroleague with the specifics of what parts of the article need to be fixed. Good luck! GoingBatty (talk) 04:25, 21 December 2013 (UTC)

BAG Membership request

I have been nominated for BAG membership. Input is invited. The request can be found at Wikipedia:Bot Approvals Group/nominations/Cyberpower678 2.—cyberpower _Online^{Merry Christmas} 14:23, 22 December 2013 (UTC)

British Library "Mechanical Curator" image collection

Wild Turkey - Sportsman and Naturalist in Canada.jpeg, from the Mechanical Curator collection.

Looking for something worthwhile to do on Boxing Day, once you've finished all the mince pies?

A week ago, the British Library uploaded just over a million free images to Flickr, scanned from over 50,000 mostly nineteenth-century books. (BL blog post; news reports). There are some real gems in there -- here's a curated set of highlight images put together by the BL team, along with other sets, including 'Portraits', 'Maps', 'Christmas' and 'Science Fiction', found by the community, in addition to all of which the eponymous Mechanical Curator is posting a new random set of 100 images each Friday.

However, one initial issue with the collection is that so far it has been rather hard to search. The BL are hoping that people will eventually be able to crowd-tag it, but as of yet very few tags are in place right now; so at the moment it's quite hard to find images about a particular place or topic. (And certainly hard to find all of them).

And this is where we can come in. Commons now has a full list up of all the titles that were scanned, and is starting to work up a synoptic subject and place index to the book titles (though it's still at quite an early stage).

As a first step, the subject index has been been populated with a search for the word "history", for books with more than 15 images, and then the results organised geographically. This can produce quite a lot of hits, as shown by e.g the U.K. and Ireland page. But it's just the tip of the iceberg of what's still out there -- for most places and most topics there are still significantly better titles in the collection to be found than the ones so far included in the index.

So what would really make a difference -- what would open the doors to make this collection properly accessible -- would be any help that can be given to go through the list of books, either from the top or for particular keywords, and systematically build up this index.

Ultimately the value of these images is to be able to use them, and the wonderful thing is that they are all 100% public domain CC-0 free, so we are completely free to bring the images over to Commons and use them for any purpose we want. (See the project page on Commons for important details about how Commons would like images tagged if you do bring them over to put into articles, so we can keep the Commons pages in step with any information that gets added to their Flickr pages.)

Finally, it's worth noting that the BL is also making freely available the pdf files of the full scans of all the books in the collection, which can be accessed by hitting the 'more information' link in the panel on the right-hand side of any image. So if we can get this index in place and properly comprehensive, it will open the door not just to all the images, but also to over 50,000 volumes of public domain text content, that we can then freely re-use in whatever way we wish for articles. Jheald (talk) 18:15, 22 December 2013 (UTC)

I second this appeal (but why wait 'til Boxing Day - it's something to do when the rest of the family are sleeping/ arguing after Christmas dinner!). Many thanks to Jheald, for the great work done to get things ready on Commons. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 18:50, 22 December 2013 (UTC)

Talk:Senkaku Islands#Requested move

There currently a requested move at Talk:Senkaku Islands#Requested move, the numbers participating are disappointingly low and so a clear consensus is not emerging. It would help if some others would read the arguments and express their opinions on what is the most suitable name. -- PBS (talk) 17:26, 23 December 2013 (UTC)

Comments requested

Hello, all! I was looking for some comments regarding an issue with a couple of sections in the diverging diamond interchange article. Only four votes have been cast so far, and though three of them go for one choice, I don't feel like four people (myself included) create any sort of consensus, so I thought I'd get some broader input. Your opinion would be much appreciated at the discussion. Thank you! —203 02:37, 27 December 2013 (UTC)

Google and Yahoo's use of Wikipedia articles

Both Google and Yahoo use excerpts of Wikipedia pages in a right-hand side content pane. For example, you can search for "jean claude van damme". Both sites "cite" Wikipedia by including a link to "Wikipedia" that simply points to the article. That's it. I'm not well versed in the intricacies of licenses but it seems pretty obvious to me that both Google and Yahoo may not be in compliance with the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License. For instance, there's no link to that license. I'm also not sure how the "Share Alike" cause works in conjunction with the search result pages returned. Anybody with a deeper understanding of this issue want to comment? Is merely a link to a CCAS 3.0-licensed article itself sufficient for attribution? Jason Quinn (talk) 11:42, 21 December 2013 (UTC)

They link the excerpt to the Wikipedia article where it is taken from. That takes care of the attribution part. As for 'providing a link to the license', I think that only applies when they copy the entire work, not merely one sentense. — Edokter (talk) — 12:37, 21 December 2013 (UTC)

I'm also intrigued by the ShareAlike issue. If the excerpt is derivative work, then the search results must be published with the CC BY-SA licence as well. Now, if the excerpt is a fair use quote, then no. --NaBUru38 (talk) 21:31, 27 December 2013 (UTC)

As noted, such a small excerpt would almost certainly qualify as fair use like the excerpts in search result listings. I notice Bing does provide the license if you click the + to see the full excerpt. Google provides it if you click on the "Feedback/More info" link. Mr.Z-man 22:44, 27 December 2013 (UTC)

I don't know the legal details but in practice, I think the main problem isn't the Wikipedia credit they give for the excerpt but that it's unclear that it only refers to one text paragraph, for example in jean claude van damme. The help desk gets many complaints about errors in the image(s) or infobox, usually without mentioning they saw the problem in a Google search and not at Wikipedia (sometimes they even link to a Wikipedia article with no image and claim it contains a wrong image). {{HD/GKG}} was made for the purpose. PrimeHunter (talk) 01:32, 28 December 2013 (UTC)

AfC Backlog

Articles for creation has an enormous backlog, with submissions as old as four weeks ago. If you have some spare time, helping to plough through the AfC backlog would be a great way to ensure that newbies are not discouraged. It's tiring and dispiriting work, so many hands would definitely help make this particular burden lighter. —Tom Morris (talk) 17:45, 27 December 2013 (UTC)

Missing article?

Is there an article covering the current severe weather events affecting Ireland, the UK and France - i.e. from 23 December onwards, post Cyclone Xaver? Mjroots (talk) 19:33, 27 December 2013 (UTC)

Do you mean Cyclone Xaver or Cyclone Dirk? :) --NaBUru38 (talk) 21:34, 27 December 2013 (UTC)

Cyclone Dirk - thanks for that. Will be able to add to the article over coming days. Mjroots (talk) 21:53, 27 December 2013 (UTC)

"Sponsored content" - What the hell is going on?

I'm seeing "Sponsored Content Seeing ads? Wikimedia is experimenting with a new ad program. Add your thoughts here." all over the damn place.

• See screenshot

When I follow the link to complain about it, I see this:

• See screenshot

This page claims that the hoax came from "vandalism". However, on checking the edit history both the page in question (Names of China) and the template (Template:Chinese), nobody has made any edits. This isn't the only time I've seen this; there was another template, but I forgot which one. --benlisquare_T•C•E 12:20, 28 December 2013 (UTC)

Here. --Closedmouth (talk) 12:23, 28 December 2013 (UTC)

Whoops, didn't think to check the footer. Thanks. I guess that the template needs to be purged? I'm still seeing it. --benlisquare_T•C•E 12:24, 28 December 2013 (UTC)

Purge the article. Purging the template doesn't really do much. --Closedmouth (talk) 12:43, 28 December 2013 (UTC)

possible hoax

I don't know exactly where to put this. If anyone knows a better place to put it, feel free to let me know.

I recently stumbled upon the article Breast Touching Festival of China though this mention on reddit. It smells like hoax to me. Can anyone verify if this is actually real? Amphicoelias (talk) 12:56, 29 December 2013 (UTC)

Well spotted. :) It looks to me like it was a hoax from the Daily Chilli that caught on for a bit giving a false impression that it was true, rather than a deliberate attempt to insert a hoax article into Wikipedia. I've nominated it for AfD, so I guess we'll see how that goes, and if anyone can find something different to back it up. - Bilby (talk) 13:46, 29 December 2013 (UTC)

Nice digging work from you too. Anyway, glad i could help. :) Amphicoelias (talk) 14:07, 29 December 2013 (UTC)

I added {{hoax}} to the article. GoingBatty (talk) 17:40, 29 December 2013 (UTC)

And the article has been snow'd and deleted. Once again, good catch, Amphicoelias --Novusuna ^talk 23:22, 30 December 2013 (UTC)

Once again, glad i could help. Amphicoelias (talk) 01:26, 31 December 2013 (UTC)

Featured sounds

Wikipedia:Featured sound candidates is marked as inactive. Do we no longer have featured sounds? If not, why not? Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 12:19, 31 December 2013 (UTC)

Infographic use

I have a number of reservations about the use of complex infographics giving a large number of facts like File:Human Aquatic Adaptations.png in Aquatic ape hypothesis. I have complained in Talk:Aquatic ape hypothesis#Summary diagram but really I would like to know what is the best place to discuss something like this or where there is appropriate guidance thanks. I asked about this at the MOS for Images but it doesn't seem to have much traffic. Dmcq (talk) 13:28, 31 December 2013 (UTC)

I think the appropriate place to discuss what you are concerned about would probably be WP:No original research/Noticeboard. If I understand correctly, your concern seems to be that infographics can present (or mis-represent) conjecture as if it were accepted fact, which is a typical NOR issue. That said... In most cases, the problem can be resolved by amending the caption of the infographic (to make it clear to the reader that what is being presented is just an illustration of the hypothesis, and not necessarily fact). Blueboar (talk) 14:06, 31 December 2013 (UTC)

Okay thanks I'll go there. A more general objection I have even for ones that present generally accepted stuff is that they are not easy to change so I think they should not have too many facts in them, they make problems for the idea of an encyclopaedia anyone can edit. Dmcq (talk) 22:28, 31 December 2013 (UTC)

Consider also the accessibility implications of such images; how is their content made available to, for example, blind people who have pages read to them by assistive software? My WP:WikiProject Accessibility folk can offer further advice. I'll alert them to the discussion. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 22:57, 31 December 2013 (UTC)

Close discussion

Could an admin please close the discussion at Talk:Big Bang#Before the earliest moments. Thank you in advance. nagualdesign (talk) 20:53, 31 December 2013 (UTC)

There is no need for this closure as there was no controversy, and discussion is still fairly recent. The thank you posted last is likely conclusive enough. Improvement can always continue. Graeme Bartlett (talk) 20:59, 1 January 2014 (UTC)

Closing Holodomor RfC Reply

Could someone please close the Holodomor RfC? Legobot has removed the tag without any outcome summary. Thanks! --Iryna Harpy (talk) 21:34, 1 January 2014 (UTC)

This is a wrong venue. I suggest that you post it here: Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Requests for closure--Ymblanter (talk) 22:20, 1 January 2014 (UTC)

Thanks, Ymblanter. Apologies for using the wrong venue. --Iryna Harpy (talk) 22:47, 1 January 2014 (UTC)

New user has hit the ground running

I've encountered a newbie, Androoox, whose contributions smack of, "These holidays I'm going to fix everything wrong with Wikipedia."

He/she has made nearly 500 edits since opening an account on 21 December 2013, the majority (approx. 400+) of which were made from 29 to 31 December. Currently he/she has applied for 3 Cfr-speedy moves and I've left a comment under the proposal for Category:Cyrillic romanization. I'll just add a cut & paste here for easy reference:

"As you may have noted, I haven't stated any objection to your developing the Macedonian portion of Wikipedia (otherwise I would have left a comment under one of the categories you've submitted below). My concern is that you've hit the ground running and are not following protocols. The majority of your changes have impacted on developed articles and categories everywhere in the world without so much as even a brief edit summary.

A rare edit summary such as, "it is called "European Parliament"" isn't an edit summary but a statement. Please provide some indication that you've have identified it as being COMMONNAME and provide references.

Also, be aware of Wikipedia history regarding certain matters.

While I recognise that you're trying to do a quick clean-up and have made some commendable contributions, since opening your account on 21 December 2013, you've made nearly 500 edits. The majority of edits have taken place since 29 December. Of these, only 25 of have been to article talk pages with 22 being MOVES to a new talk page, not actual discussion on the talk page. You've made 20 alterations to templates, and have submitted 3 categories for speedy renaming and 5 alterations to Wikipedia categories in place. Alarm bells are ringing."

Having just come out from underneath a massive manual clean-up when a user made a unilateral decision to move "Galicia, Eastern Europe" to "Galicia, Central Europe" (and still finding the occasional edit remnant), I'm loathe to leave this to the point where most of the changes can't be automatically rolled back once other contributors have added/changed content. I'd be grateful if one of the editors/administrators could take a look at the contributions (before Androoox wakes up and starts on WikiNewYear).

(Happy New Year!) --Iryna Harpy (talk) 03:46, 1 January 2014 (UTC)

Do the changes relating to Galicia fall afoul of Wikipedia:Requests for arbitration/Eastern Europe by any chance? Chris857 (talk) 03:52, 1 January 2014 (UTC)

Don't panic. No, they don't. Fortunately, that ended up being discussed (is still under discussion), but shouldn't rear its head for a few months until the next unilateral change. It does, however, impinge on Cyrillic naming conventions and could possibly run afoul of that. The user hasn't made any overtures to discussing any of his ideas except regarding Macedonian Cyrillic. Basically, I can't figure out what he's trying to apply and how many pages it's going to affect. --Iryna Harpy (talk) 04:02, 1 January 2014 (UTC)

So you are talking about me without informing me. But I spied on you as you did on me and so found it.

Any policies forbidding "20 alterations to templates", "submitted 3 categories for speedy renaming", "5 alterations to Wikipedia categories" ? Is it not called European Parliament? Where is it defined that a statement cannot be an edit summary? Any response to my suggestion you might help with articles about villages of Macedonia?

Wikipedia:Please do not bite the newcomers - nothing scares potentially valuable contributors away faster than hostility. I see nothing but hostility from you. Maybe you try to cure yourself from alarm bells. Androoox (talk) 14:26, 1 January 2014 (UTC)

Androoox, please take a look at the 'be bold' policy carefully. It advises you to be bold... but cautious. To be honest, I'm happy to back off and leave it all alone rather than be uncivil towards you. You will, however, have to explain to other contributors and editors what your plan of action is at some point or another. I would simply like to know what your rationale for restructuring categories and redirecting pages is, i.e. what you would like to accomplish at the end of the restructure (as per my original query on the Cfr-speedy page where you only responded regarding the Macedonia pages, not the assorted Cyrillic categories and redirects you've been tweaking without explaining the objective). --Iryna Harpy (talk) 22:01, 1 January 2014 (UTC)

Addendum - As I'd seen the original version of your response, Androoox, I wasn't certain as to how genuine the invitation was. I have a huge backlog of articles to copyedit and fact-check, but would be happy to put the Macedonian articles on my watchlist (which I'm doing now) in case I can assist in some way. --Iryna Harpy (talk) 04:13, 2 January 2014 (UTC)

Androox is correct to request moving the 'municipality' categories to 'Municipality'. The M should be capitalised. Many of this user's edits have come up on my watchlist and, while I haven't checked every single edit, I haven't encountered one that seemed to be troublesome. His edits seem to be helpful to the Macedonia-related articles, which otherwise don't see much editing activity at all. --Local hero ^talk 19:48, 1 January 2014 (UTC)

If you look at articles containing the word municipality in their titles, then capitalization definitely seems to be normal. WhatamIdoing (talk) 00:08, 2 January 2014 (UTC)

Apologies for pushing the issue, but has anyone checked on the extent of Androoox's edits (which most certainly are not confined to Macedonia-related articles), including redirects which were not discussed, much less proposed through the correct channels. I seriously don't want to have to be dragged through the 'don't bite the newcomers' and accusations of 'spying' on activities campaigns. I'd rather have the situation evaluated by a third party before it escalates into full blown aggression. Once a few of the editors who edit in that part of Wikipedia come back from their break, I guarantee it'll get nasty. Thank you in advance. --Iryna Harpy (talk) 21:48, 1 January 2014 (UTC)

I don't remember the last time I "proposed" a new redirect. I'm not entirely sure what "the correct channels" are.

Edits like this are manually fixing double redirects to pages that he moved to make way for the new dab page at Vinica Municipality. Fixing double redirects, rather than waiting around for a bot, is a doubleplusgood action.

Since there appear to be three municipalities by that name in the world, then having created the dab page doesn't seem unreasonable. If they're all approximately equal, then it was definitely correct. It will require some WP:DABSOLVER work, but creating disambiguation pages often does that.

Now I've only looked at the one set of edits, but I'm not really seeing anything to worry about here. WhatamIdoing (talk) 00:08, 2 January 2014 (UTC)

So long as you've had a quick look at all of the affected categories, etc., and feel that there's no problem with having to discuss these moves with any other editors, I'm good with it. Again, I'd like to reiterate that I don't see any issues with developing the Macedonian section of Wikipedia. I sincerely hope that the Russian and other East European category, redirect & disambiguation changes are as straight forward. --Iryna Harpy (talk) 00:40, 2 January 2014 (UTC)

Example - As you'd know, redirects of existing, established articles DO often require an WP:RM, WhatamIdoing. I'd suggest that, after a string of changes made without a single edit summary has been RV'ed, the first edit summary left should probably not read in a distinctly bitey tone towards an established editor. Just because the contributor knows what they've already tweaked and consider it an uncontroversial move, when considering such moves on existing articles (particularly in the domain of a part of Wikipedia that is notorious for its warring and sanctions), that doesn't mean that it will be automatically understood as being uncontroversial. Is it really that difficult to leave a quick note on the article's talk page in order that everyone else know what you're doing and why? --Iryna Harpy (talk) 03:59, 2 January 2014 (UTC)

Most people honestly don't know that moving an existing article to another, "better" (in their minds) name is controversial until it blows up in their faces. People usually act surprised when this happens. Also, a newer editor isn't likely to know which areas are notorious for warring and sanctions. Fools rush in where angels fear to tread, and newbies believe that WP:BOLD action is actually supported by the community.

Yes, you'd think that it would be easy to leave a message on an article's talk page. However, few people do this for "obviously" better page moves, and most such messages just get ignored, including by the people who yell loudly when you make the "apparently unopposed" change a week later. And I can't claim to be any better than them, because it's a really good day if I've looked at just 10% of the articles on my watchlist, so I'm unfortunately ignoring a lot of polite messages from people who are just trying to help, too.

Follow up from talk pages proposals requires an unusual amount of organization. You have to remember next week that you said today that you'd check back to see whether anyone objected—and if there's no response (the likely outcome for >80% of such proposals), it doesn't pop up in your watchlist to remind you. If you're dealing with dozens of page moves, this is basically beyond most people. The best I can say is: Hey, can we get some kind of remind-me-in-a-week feature in WP:Flow, for all those times that we tell someone that we'll check back? WhatamIdoing (talk) 06:57, 2 January 2014 (UTC)

I second the reminder, PLEASE (should Quiddity actually find the time to respond to your ping). Funny you should bring this up as over last week I've suddenly had several responses to page merges, section split offs and other suggestions I 'was going to get back to in a week or so' months ago. By that stage, I had to get my bearings as to the details of my thoughts on the matter. There's nothing worse than losing the flow due to having been involved in a lot of water under the bridge (excuse the fluid puns/metaphors)... Well, there are worse things, but a reminder system would be definitely be a slice of heaven. Having to drop what you're working on or put responding on the backburner (in real terms, meaning 'ignore') = lost productivity time. --Iryna Harpy (talk) 09:23, 2 January 2014 (UTC)

I have exactly that problem with those discussions, too! A specialized workflow for proposed merges, splits, and moves should be do-able. I'm convinced that "oops, I forgot that I proposed that" is responsible for a fraction of the articles in the proposed merge backlog. It won't solve the (bigger?) problem of "I proposed it because I don't want to bother doing the tedious and/or difficult work of actually merging the pages", but it might help. What's important is that the workflow tell me (as the original poster) that it's been sitting around long enough, not that the discussion automatically move into a general "all the merges that are ready to be closed" category/page (which is already expected for AFDs and PRODs).

And if there were a more general "remind me about this thread in a week" option, then so much the better. I wouldn't have to keep manual notes saying "I promised to get back to User:Example". WhatamIdoing (talk) 16:13, 2 January 2014 (UTC)

I've added it to the list. :) Quiddity (WMF) (talk) 21:09, 2 January 2014 (UTC)

Cheers, Quiddity! Just a quick note for WhatamIdoing: I went through the entire list of Androoox's edits. Actually, he/she has done an excellent job, although edit comments and more talk page interaction would be appropriate. There are a few 'sticky' areas (the clusters which sent me into a panic). It shouldn't get too prickly and it's motivation to do a general clean up of entries that have become extremely messy. Cheers for everyone's assistance! --Iryna Harpy (talk) 23:24, 2 January 2014 (UTC)

I admit I am sometimes a little bit lazy on edit summaries, and sometimes it is a pure mistake, hitting enter before pasting text or so. Androoox (talk) 23:30, 2 January 2014 (UTC)

Hi Androoox, you might try going to Special:Preferences#mw-prefsection-editing and ticking the box to get a reminder if you forget to add an edit summary. I've had inconsistent results with it in recent months, but if it works for you, then it would give you a second chance. You could always un-tick the box later if you decided that you didn't like it. WhatamIdoing (talk) 00:28, 3 January 2014 (UTC)

Wonder Women of Natural History: Wikipedia editathon at London Zoo, January 18th

Hi All

I'm organising a Wikipedia editathon at London Zoo on January the 18th, please have a look and come or join in online if you'd like. More info here.

Thanks

Mrjohncummings (talk) 11:06, 2 January 2014 (UTC)

Diversity and Social Justice Project Needs Contributors

Colleagues, I would like to offer you an opportunity to submit an entry for The Encyclopedia of Diversity and Social Justice. This encyclopedia is being compiled in order to provide readers with a reference book that discusses relevant diversity and social justice topics. It will convey and communicate topics of interest for a wide audience of readers. You may choose an entry topic from a selected list available on our website or you may select a topic of your own choosing. Entries have a word count of 300 – 3,000 words. For more information about this exciting opportunity please visit http://coe.eku.edu/encyclopedia-diversity-and-social-justice. 2dixon (talk) 17:03, 2 January 2014 (UTC)

Thanks for posting, 2dixon. Why not merge this encyclopedia project with Wikipedia, and have contributors to that project edit here? Why fork the concept of a free wiki-based encyclopedia? Also, I notice that on your contact sheet you offer to make notes about contributors' physical addresses and fax numbers but not their emails. This seems a bit dated to me for an online project - how does it seem to you? Have you thought about checking out the precedent for university crowdsourcing of encyclopedia content at the Wikipedia Education Project? There is a tutorial at Wikipedia:Training/For_educators if you are interested. Thanks! Blue Rasberry (talk) 18:44, 2 January 2014 (UTC)

Public Domain Day 2014

Each year on the first of January we have Public Domain Day. The copyright expires of many images and all the works of an author who died xx years ago (often 70 years ago), will come into the public domain. Each year this results in restoring hundreds of images. I went through the logs and these are the results: Commons:User:Romaine/Public Domain Day/2014. Everyone is invited to place those images in appropriate places in articles! Romaine (talk) 14:46, 3 January 2014 (UTC)

Wow, great resource! A lot of the artists of those images don't have articles, so it's a great jumping off point for creating them. Thanks! — Frεcklεfσσt | Talk 15:23, 3 January 2014 (UTC)

I started two days ago [20]--Ymblanter (talk) 16:14, 3 January 2014 (UTC)

A question

What is the difference between Category:Mexican Roman Catholic bishops and Category:Roman Catholic bishops in Mexico? Thank, --Metrónomo (talk) 17:57, 31 December 2013 (UTC)

Hmmm... at a guess, the first is for bishops who are of Mexican national/ethnic heritage, whatever their diocese... while the other is for bishops of diocese in Mexico, whatever their national/ethnic heritage. Blueboar (talk) 19:08, 31 December 2013 (UTC)

Okay. Could you help link each in its correct item in Wikidata? Thanks you, --Metrónomo (talk) 00:30, 1 January 2014 (UTC)

Any volunteers? Is it very hard to do? I can not because I do not know the inner workings of this Wikipedia. --Metrónomo-Goldwyn-Mayer 02:23, 5 January 2014 (UTC)

 Done, the first one was already here, the second one connected with the Portuguese category. I was not able to detect categories in other languages.--Ymblanter (talk) 09:27, 5 January 2014 (UTC)

I'm sorry but that's wrong. d:Q8623174 say "Évêque catholique au Mexique" (in French), means "Catholic bishops in Mexico". And same with Danish. But Italian, Norwegian and Polish categories meas "Mexican Catholic Bishops". Can it be possible that these Wikipedias both sentences have the same meaning? I say this because it separated into two different types, but they have one. In Spanish is confusing because their categories will assume that there is only Roman Catholic bishops in Mexico, as in Swedish, Russian and Dutch. --Metrónomo-Goldwyn-Mayer 16:15, 6 January 2014 (UTC)

If you need Wikidata help, I would be willing to help, but I am not sure I can help with the question what category actually means what.--Ymblanter (talk) 19:38, 6 January 2014 (UTC)

Russians

Why do the Russians get a nice Christmas gift-wrapped logo on their wikipedia and we stick with the same one? 72.137.51.40 (talk) 15:50, 3 January 2014 (UTC)

Because they wanted one? We can do this kind of thing if we want. We just have to decide to do it. WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:38, 3 January 2014 (UTC)

We could do it next year. Maybe this Saint Patrick's Day we'll put a four-leaf clover on the logo. K6ka (talk | contrib) 23:34, 3 January 2014 (UTC)

I don't know Russian but it appears from ru:File:Wiki.png that it's a New Year logo and not a Christmas logo. There was a late English proposal at Wikipedia:Village pump (proposals)/Archive 108#Wiki.png. I don't know the policies of the Russian Wikipedia but their editors and readers are probably less spread around the World with different calendars and religions. PrimeHunter (talk) 04:17, 5 January 2014 (UTC)

It is a New Year Logo indeed. They had a short poll on the Vllage Pump and have chosen this logo to replace the usual one for a couple of days.--Ymblanter (talk) 09:28, 5 January 2014 (UTC)

It could be the thin end of the wedge on WP:EN though, especially (as pointed out) with a wide readership of different calendars and religions. Personally I find Google has "special" logos so often that they're no longer special. Si Trew (talk) 11:38, 6 January 2014 (UTC)

New Commons policy to limit deletion of images that are public domain everywhere except under local US law.

I have made a new proposal on Commons to change the site's policies to allow for public domain non-US originating images which are nominally copyrighted in the US to be hosted on the site, provided that the copyright owner has renounced any local US rights. This may sound like common sense, but it is the result of US law, which Commons must account for as its servers are located there. US law does not normally take into account the copyright status of works in their source countries, and the Uruguay Round Agreements Act (URAA) restored US copyrights on some works that are in the public domain outside US territory. The new policy, if approved, would allow such public domain works to be hosted on the site if the copyright owner had disclaimed their local US copyright.

The proposal has been picked up by this week's Signpost under the heading "Commons moves to rationalize copyright policy".

I hope the proposal will find broad support, as it's particularly important to allow us to keep public domain government works from some countries, such as Canada.

Please visit commons:Commons:Hosting_of_content_released_to_the_public_domain_globally and leave your thoughts on the talk page. Many thanks. --MichaelMaggs (talk) 11:33, 5 January 2014 (UTC)

User pages with G7

Does anyone know why some brand new accounts create a user page with a G7 template on it - and don't seem to do anything else? It's been puzzling me for a while. Peridon (talk) 19:37, 6 January 2014 (UTC)

I don't know, it's unusual. Some of them aren't even correctly typing in {{db-g7}}, for example here is a user with 5 edits [21] who added db-g7 (no brackets) and here is user with two edits, named User:LouiseV adding {db-g7} (single bracket) to the user page of User:The Louise V(trying to change his username?) who only has 2 edits.AioftheStorm (talk) 00:04, 7 January 2014 (UTC)

grok.se is down

See also [Analytics] Udp2log consumers / Eventlogging issues from 2014-01-05, bugzilla:42259

Since this is a fairly vital service for my Traffic report, I have to wonder if it could somehow be redone in-house, instead of relying on outside contractors as it were. Serendi^podous 20:15, 5 January 2014 (UTC)

Absolutely! but it sometimes goes out for a while, though rarely this long - since 1/1. Do we know it will come back? Johnbod (talk) 20:24, 5 January 2014 (UTC)

Serendipodous, you might want to contact User:Erik Zachte to see whether his stats collection is useful to you. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 22:52, 5 January 2014 (UTC)

Thanks but his blog seems to focus on editing stats, and it's views I'm after. Serendi^podous 23:16, 5 January 2014 (UTC)

I just checked. stats.grok.se has data for 1 and 4 January, so outage is intermittent. Today I learned there was a server issue on 5th and 6th resulting in empty files, see [22]. But that is probably unrelated. There were plans to host stats.grok.se on WMF servers, but that never happened yet. Erik Zachte (talk) 23:36, 6 January 2014 (UTC)

On a couple of sample articles I'm seeing 1 January ok, nothing for 4, 5 very incomplete - 20-30% of the real figure, the rest to 8 missing. In the past gaps have been made up later. Johnbod (talk) 15:07, 9 January 2014 (UTC)

Well it should happen. At the very least, someone should contact the guy running that site and ask him if he's going to continue monitoring it. Otherwise we need to find another stat site to link to. Serendi^podous 10:20, 9 January 2014 (UTC)

• I depend on these reports and am harmed when I do not have access to this service. I wish for good access to these numbers even though I do not participate at all in the back end of serving these numbers. I hardly would know how to look at them from the software side. If there are any other stakeholders in these numbers who would like to be in touch with me to share in the responsibility of talking about what kinds of numbers ought to be available and raising awareness of how these numbers are useful, then contact me and perhaps we can be together in solidarity. Blue Rasberry (talk) 15:00, 9 January 2014 (UTC)

'Category:Polled out from another wikipedia'?

This category [23] seems bizarre to me. I think what it is intended to mean is 'Category:Article on the same subject deleted on another Wikipedia', or something similar. If so, it is clearly misnamed - but is such categorisation valid at all? Each Wikipedia has its own policy and guidelines regarding content, and tagging an article because another article has been deleted elsewhere seems to me to add nothing to encyclopaedic content. Either the article is acceptable on en.Wikipedia or it isn't. I'm tempted to simply nominate it for deletion, but before I do so, does anyone know if a similar category has been discussed before? AndyTheGrump (talk) 15:37, 7 January 2014 (UTC)

The category currently has four articles, all of which have been deleted from the french wikipedia site. I think the creator was trying for "Pulled". I don't see any reason for it - different wikipedias have different standards on notability, I think this category is at least partially an attempt to shame other wikipedias for deleting articles. Ravensfire (talk) 15:59, 7 January 2014 (UTC)

Looks pointless to me. Go ahead and nom. If you don't, I might. Of the four articles, one is notable, one might be, one is now tagged for AfD here (by me), and one is currently up and running at frwiki (but tagged there for AfD - at time of posting, 2 keep, 1 delete + the nom...) Peridon (talk) 11:23, 8 January 2014 (UTC)

Indicating Open Government Licence content in Wikipedia

I've just written Reginald Mount, including a small amount of National Archives text, which they release under the Open Government Licence. Which template should I use to indicate that? Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 17:08, 7 January 2014 (UTC)

I have heard about this and also heard that Creative Commons is promoting a government license. I suppose that new templates should be made just for these licenses, right? Is there another option? Blue Rasberry (talk) 16:35, 9 January 2014 (UTC)

Wiki Education Foundation 8 January 2014 update

There is a new update from the Wiki Education Foundation at the Education noticeboard. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 02:42, 9 January 2014 (UTC)

"Other pages link to the page you are about to delete"

See also: Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)/Archive 122 § Deletion warning in new version of MediaWiki

While speedily deleting a page, I noticed a warning during the process that said "Other pages link to the page you are about to delete". Is this new? If so, I suggest that it be modified to display only if other pages in articlespace link to the page about to be deleted. Any page being deleted is likely to have some page linking to it -- such as the user talk page of the page's creator, or a Wikipedia:Articles for deletion subpage. But links such as those don't carry the implication that the page being deleted might be encyclopedic, whereas a link from another article page might carry such an implication. --Metropolitan90 (talk) 03:23, 10 January 2014 (UTC)

Looks new to me too. I saw it last night, and found it annoying and 'nanny knows best'-ish. I would agree with something that puts you on to unsuspected redirects (which are usually found by patrollers and tagged fairly soon anyway). I don't remember seeing this change being discussed - but as there are so many boards around I might have missed it. Peridon (talk) 10:46, 10 January 2014 (UTC)

What is the purpose of the warning? If an automated warning to check "What links here" is needed, wouldn't it make more sense to have it appear earlier in the deletion process... at the time of the prod or the nomination? (ie before the decision to delete has been made). Blueboar (talk) 14:47, 12 January 2014 (UTC)

The message is from MediaWiki:Deleting-backlinks-warning and it's one of those weird Mediwiki pages where there's no edit history – it's just shining through from somewhere, so I can't tell who created it and track down what discussion prompted its creation. Anyway, we already have a note when we are about the delete in the bulleted list of things to check beforehand above the deletion summary window, which says "Check "What Links Here" before deleting. Links to this page will not be changed." I just checked and yes, the new message displays if there are any links to anywhere, so it will display just about always since there's a user talk page warning which normally accompanies every pending deletion. Having it display for redirects and mainspace links (and say which) might be a useful but its display now, for every deletion, is useless bloat.--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 15:46, 12 January 2014 (UTC)

Hmm. Maybe this will shed some light for someone who understands this stuff.--Fuhghettaboutit (talk) 15:52, 12 January 2014 (UTC)

Those "weird Mediwiki pages where there's no edit history – it's just shining through from somewhere" are where the message has not been locally customized, so it's using the MediaWiki default. Anomie⚔ 19:20, 12 January 2014 (UTC)

• I just found out about the discussion on Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)/Archive 122#Deletion warning in new version of MediaWiki which is linked above now, so I guess that is where to address this. --Metropolitan90 (talk) 19:10, 12 January 2014 (UTC)

Happy Wikipedia Day 2014!

Nothing more than that. Just reminding people it's Wikipedia:Wikipedia_day. The project started 13 years ago today. -- Fuzheado | Talk 18:48, 15 January 2014 (UTC)

Travelling Salesman Problem and P v NP

How would the math community reference a solution to two of the remaining six Clay Foundation Millennium prizes if it were published in the form of humor on a User's Talk Page? Some mathematicians have done stranger things! Frank Layden (talk) 02:34, 17 January 2014 (UTC)

User merging article for municipality with article for municipal seat

User:No such user is re-merging articles of municipalities and municipal seats. E.g. these two:

	Municipality	Seat
Article	Nova Crnja Municipality	Nova Crnja (village) located inside the municipality.
Population	10,272	1,491
Map	image map (area)	pushpin map (point)
Wikidata	d:Q914410	d:Q266760
Borders	e.g. Žitište Municipality	???
Type	municipality of Serbia	village of Serbia
Populated places	6	n/a
Demographics	Serb: 70,31%, Hungarian: 18,64%	Serb: 6,01%, Hungarian: 84,57%
Located in	Central Banat District	Nova Crnja Municipality
sr WP	sr:Општина Нова Црња	sr:Нова Црња
hu WP	hu:Magyarcsernye község	hu:Magyarcsernye

Several article sets distinguish between the municipality and the seat, so that there is one article for each of them. This is also seen in Wikidata.

Country	Main article	Category	WD	en WP	en WP ex.	Population	WD	other WP
Bulgaria	Municipalities of Bulgaria	M of ...	d:Q1906268	1. municipality, 2. seat	Bansko Municipality, Bansko	13,225 - 8,911	d:Q2085163 - d:Q391159
Kosovo	Municipalities of Kosovo	M of ...	d:Q2989682	mixed article	Đakovica	94.158 - 40.827	d:Q3656386 - d:Q474651	sr:Општина Ђаковица, sr:Ђаковица
Macedonia	Municipalities of the Republic of Macedonia	M of ...	d:Q646793	1. municipality, 2. seat	Berovo Municipality, Berovo	13,941 - 7,002	d:Q793727 - d:Q827047
Montenegro	Municipalities of Montenegro	M of ...	d:Q838549	1. municipality, 2. seat	Andrijevica Municipality, Andrijevica	5,071 - 1,073	d:Q2384773 - d:Q242059
Serbia	Municipalities of Serbia	M of ...	d:Q783930	mixed article	Nova Crnja	10,272 - 1,491	d:Q914410 - d:Q266760	sr:Општина Нова Црња - sr:Нова Црња
Slovenia	Municipalities of Slovenia	M of ...	d:Q328584	1. municipality, 2. seat	Municipality of Ajdovščina, Ajdovščina	18,850 - 6,676	d:Q331701 - d:Q15854

The user's comments and my reply here:

• [24]
  • the articles mostly map 1:1 --- well, actually, mostly they don't. I have never seen an example when they did.
  • most of them are too short and underdeveloped ---- well, that is why I work on them
  • and creating content forks just gives more burden on maintenance and categorization - well, exactly the opposite, clear mapping, clear categorization
  • to the shrinking pool of Serbian editors on En.wiki ---- well, maybe it is because en WP looks so disorganized that many people don't bother to edit
  • Thus, I'm reverting your changes to villages of Beočin and Žitište. They were just fine in terms of organization ---- No, they were not. Beočin is a place within Beočin Municipality and Banoštor is located in Beočin Municipality not in the seat named Beočin.
  • as witnessed by the previous 10 years of so of their existence. ---- This could have been changed 10 years ago. See Serbian Wikipedia, where they separate the items.
• [25]
  • I'm not going to be gentle with you --- Your choice.
  • If you really want to be of help, you could, for example, update the village and town population figures --- Exactly that is my plan. But best via Wikidata. And for using the data from there more easily I did create municipality articles separated from the seats. Then the Infobox:Settlement can be used to display Wikidata values directly. And bots could do other updates.

So what to do now? Androoox (talk) 04:18, 17 January 2014 (UTC)

If this is contested then the user should stop and have a conversation. This is a perennial problem in many places. So far as I know there is no general guideline. Wikipedia's existing guidelines suggest that sometimes these should be merged, and sometimes not, depending on sources and content. This process looks ugly when usually the articles are very short - and this is the most common case - but then some few positions have articles which are long and should not be merged.

The process is to ask for the user to pause, take an RfC, then respond to community consensus. What is troublesome is that this same problem happens repeatedly for every country and there is no good solution. Blue Rasberry (talk) 15:02, 17 January 2014 (UTC)

University of Science and Technology, Liaoning

Hello. The article on University of Science and Technology, Liaoning is suffering a contribution history problem. On 31 August 2010 I moved the article from University of Science and Technology Liaoning to University of Science and Technology, Liaoning because I thought the title was missing a comma. However, on 29 March 2011, User:Duzhou moved it back using copy&paste instead of requesting a move back, but also left the original version intact. The two versions seem to have continued to coexist but then on 21June 2012, User:Rincewind42 merged the two, and changed the original into a redirect. It only came to my attention recently when I happened to look at X's article counting tool and noticed that I am being credited with creating the article instead of User:Pratyeka, who made the first edit back in August 2004. I tried to get it repaired by requesting at Cut-and-paste-move repair holding pen but this does not seem to have resolved the problem. The original version now seems to be stuck at University of Science and Technology, Liaoning/version 2 and the article fork is now at University of Science and Technology, Liaoning. I hope someone can suggest a way out of this fix. Green Giant (talk) 13:25, 21 January 2014 (UTC)

Y Problem resolved by User:JamesBWatson. Green Giant (talk) 17:45, 21 January 2014 (UTC)

Feedback request: VisualEditor special character inserter

The developers are working towards offering Wikipedia:VisualEditor to all users at about 50 Wikipedias that have complex language requirements. Many editors at these Wikipedias depend on being able to insert special characters to be able to write articles.

A special character inserter tool is available in VisualEditor now. They would like to know what you think about this tool, especially if you speak languages other than English. To try the ⧼visualeditor-specialcharacterinspector-title⧽ tool:

• If you haven’t already opted-in, then opt-in to VisualEditor by going to Special:Preferences#mw-prefsection-betafeatures and choosing “VisualEditor”. Save your preferences.
• Edit any article or your user page in VisualEditor. See the mw:Help:VisualEditor/User guide for information on how to use VisualEditor.

The “insert” pulldown on the task bar of VisualEditor will lead you to the ‘⧼visualeditor-specialcharacterinspector-title⧽’ tool.

This is the ⧼visualeditor-specialcharacterinspector-title⧽ inserter. Your feedback on this tool is particularly important.

To let the developers know what you think, please leave them a message with your comments and the language(s) that you tested at the feedback thread on Mediawiki.org or here at the English Wikipedia at Wikipedia:VisualEditor/Feedback. It is really important that the developers hear from as many editors as possible. Thank you, Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 20:18, 22 January 2014 (UTC)

List of re-created articles?

Is there a list of newly created articles (or redirects) that were previously deleted? Thanks. Praemonitus (talk) 00:01, 25 January 2014 (UTC)

I'm bick, batches!

Wait, no; that's not how it goes... HalfShadow 17:45, 27 September 2015 (UTC)

I am mad now

I solved an editing conflict. I did everything well. Now i'm so mad that i want to eat table legs.Tkorrovi (talk) 23:44, 21 December 2015 (UTC)

How to deal with undisclosed paid editing?

There is a user who I suspect of being in violation of our WP:TOU, specifically that I believe them to be an undisclosed paid editor. I have read WP:Wikimedia Foundation statement on paid editing and outing and it's not clear to me from that how I should proceed to get this user investigated without my violating our outing policies. -- RoySmith (talk) 16:41, 27 August 2017 (UTC)

I recommend starting a thread at WP:COIN. You can see other threads there regarding undisclosed paid editing. — JJMC89 (T·C) 18:11, 27 August 2017 (UTC)

Also neutrally you can raise the WP:TOU and point them towards WP:PAID. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 13:12, 28 August 2017 (UTC)

Jewish pages are mostly incorrect and locked

First let me point out the word "jews" is somewhat acceptable, and the word "jew"(not plural) is considered a derogatory term (Ex: a** hole, sh**head).

Jewish people are not an ethnoreligion, as on the "jews" Wikipedia page(a better title would be nice-er). Jewish people are in every ethnicity(multi ethnic) on this planet and on every continent.

People cannot convert to the Jewish religion at all. It is supposedly possible because most Christian's or Catholics have mossionaires that display their religion to people and say come join us.

There is no joining the Jewish religion, if your mom is Jewish... you are Jewish, otherwise your not jewish, period, end of story. There are no Jewish missionaries, there never have been, and it's against the Jewish religion. As well as asking for donations at all religious ceremonies is frowned upon, there should be no passing of a bucket or hat for funding, it's an original principle of the religion. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 47.36.93.251 (talk) 16:32, 3 June 2019 (UTC)

We are required to have a neutral point-of-view, as established by reliable sources. I am fairly certain this territory has been covered extensively from an argument point of view, so your opinion is probably well reflected in many talk page discussions of e.g. talk:jew. Please feel free to read through those archives. --Izno (talk) 17:17, 3 June 2019 (UTC)

And yet there are converted, synagogue attending Jews. Doug Weller talk 05:21, 6 June 2019 (UTC)

"There is no joining the Jewish religion" Please see Conversion to Judaism. Bus stop (talk) 05:30, 6 June 2019 (UTC)

Town Hall tabs

:I would like to add a tab to the headers for various WikiProjects, to link to the page below, which is a "Town Hall" for allowing communication between different WikiProjects. Is it okay for me to do so? Please feel free to let me know, or to comment. thanks!! I think this might greatly help with the broad strategy discussions that you refer to above.

Please note, the page linked to below is merely an example, so that tab header for this page is for a different WikiProject. If implemented, the link would be placed on the specific tab header for this WikiProject, not the one shown below. thanks.

• link: Wikipedia:WikiProject History/History Town Hall

thanks. --Sm8900 (talk) 05:13, 16 February 2020 (UTC)

This concept already exist at Wikipedia:Council.--2605:8D80:566:C6D:4511:724:3C69:A946 (talk) 05:39, 16 February 2020 (UTC)

This [26] (and others like it) is really inappropriate and disruptive. Please stop begging for support for an idea that doesn't have any, or present it as a thing that will actually happen. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 05:42, 16 February 2020 (UTC)

It's not clear to me how making a proposal can be disruptive.—Naddruf (talk ~ contribs)

Making a proposal isn't disruptive on its own. Making the same proposal over and over again, combined with spamming the proposal to a bunch of different venues (user pages and Wikiprojects) to create various sub-proposals, however, is. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 18:31, 17 February 2020 (UTC)