Wikipedia:Village pump (miscellaneous)

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The miscellaneous section of the village pump is used to post messages that do not fit into any other category. Please post on the policy, technical, or proposals pages, or - for assistance - at the help desk, rather than here, if at all appropriate. For general knowledge questions, please use the reference desk.

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Looking for a pattern matching tool

I was wondering if there is a tool that could look for articles that are about the same specific astronomical object. What I had in mind is a tool that would:

1. Recursively search down a category tree to a specified depth.
2. Look in the article content for strings that match a specified regular expression.
3. Create a table of paired articles where the matched string patterns are identical. (Or else just build a list of pattern/article matches sorted by pattern.)

The idea would be that astronomical object articles tend to include a list of alternative identifiers. We could use the regular expression to look for those patterns, then the tool can list the possible matches for us to check.

I'm not sure if there are other potential uses for this. Thank you.—RJH (talk) 18:18, 1 October 2010 (UTC)

AWB does 1 and 2. You could probably write an extension (or use the same framework (or just write the whole lot from scratch in Perl)) to do 3. OrangeDog (τ • ε) 18:02, 5 October 2010 (UTC)

Thank you.—RJH (talk) 19:23, 7 October 2010 (UTC)

Page for questions about English?

Is there a page on WP where non-native editors can get assistance with the English language? Like asking what is the correct expression for something or questions about the grammar. I sometimes need to ask such questions when writing articles. Offliner (talk) 10:57, 6 October 2010 (UTC)

It's not exactly what you asked for, but WP:WikiProject Guild of Copy Editors comes close. Hans Adler 12:41, 6 October 2010 (UTC)

Offliner, do always feel free to ask me, if you're OK with the answer in British English. I went to an English grammar school in the days when they still taught grammar, and I am a published writer (exciting things like "Citizens guide to Council Tax"). --Elen of the Roads (talk) 15:42, 6 October 2010 (UTC)

If you have a specific query the language refdesk is a good place to start. Looking at it the other way, I've asked for - and received - help with other languages for articles there.- Jarry1250 ^{[Who? Discuss.]} 17:31, 6 October 2010 (UTC)

User:BD2412/250,000th edit party

Hello Wikipedia! I'm having a 250,000th edit party. You're all invited! Cheers! bd2412 T 14:18, 7 October 2010 (UTC)

persistent vandalism to Salem Witch Trials and its dependent articles

Salem Witch Trials and the articles that it links to in its template seem to have a very high degree of vandalism from unregistered users. My guess is that > 9 out of 10 of these edits are vandalism. This is a very high vandalism area, and I think it deserves protection. I am coordinator of the Salem Witch Trials Task Force. Wikipedia keeps changing and I can't keep up, and clearly I don't have the wikiskills or the computer skills. Anyone out there willing to guide me through this ? John5Russell3Finley (talk) 19:06, 7 October 2010 (UTC)

I would start here: Wikipedia:Vandalism#How to respond to vandalism, particularly 1 and 2 at the bottom.—RJH (talk) 19:28, 7 October 2010 (UTC)

User

My english is bad, so sorry if u don't understand. In es:Wiki my user namy is NicolásTM, before was "Trivia Harrypotter", but in this wiki, "NicolásTM" doesn't exist, why? I don't used this account anymore. Somebody can help me? --Trivia harrypotter (talk) 21:23, 8 October 2010 (UTC)

Did you register for single user login using the Trivia harrypotter name? If you want to use the NicolásTM username across all Wikimedia sites, you will have to register it for single user login. --Jayron32 04:48, 9 October 2010 (UTC)

Adding biographies as homework?

Something very strange seems to be going on at the University of Hull. It seems that its students have been tasked with writing biographies of artists/academics as homework. So far the only one created seems to have questionable notability. Please see: Talk:Annabeth Robinson.

I am sure that there is no bad faith here but it seems fundamentally misconceived and could cause trouble and bad feeling. We don't want non-notable biographies but we don't want students to get into trouble because we deleted their homework either. Maybe somebody needs to explain to the University why this is a bad idea. --DanielRigal (talk) 22:58, 9 October 2010 (UTC)

Academic assignments to add articles to Wikipedia are fully accepted here, and can be excellent things. There are even such project sponsored by the foundation, and many universities and schools have participated. I do not see how this can in any sense by called meatpuppetry. for a description of some of what we do here, see Wikipedia:School and university projects and WP:Schools FAQ .

In general I regard biographies as exactly the right type of articles to begin with. I've advised several projects of this sort, and that's what I always suggest, either for a short project by itself, of as an initial exercise. Naturally, the students need advice, and that's why we have projects to help them and their instructors. The obvious advice is to start with subjects who are very surely notable , and to collect sources first, before actually writing. It is not at all difficult to teach the mechanics of editing Wikipedia, The judgement for selecting article topics can be substantially more difficult, and I--and many experienced editors--am very ready to take a look at prospective topics and make suggestions. I commend any teacher who decides to do such a project, but suggest that they ask for some guidance--and ask first, before the students run into difficulties. Writing articles for WP in university classes is an excellent idea. I and two other experienced Wikipedians were down at my university a few days ago discussing this with faculty and students there, and my WP chapter has offered to help at another university as part of a grant-supporter project in coordination with the Foundation. DGG ( talk ) 02:12, 10 October 2010 (UTC)

Thanks for that. I was not aware of that we cooperated with projects of this kind. Now that you explain it, I can see how they can yield useful articles provided the project is structured properly. I still have concerns about this particular project given that the first anybody knew about it was when a group of students turned up confused about why an article was being considered for deletion (thus confusing me in turn). If it is possible to get this sorted out so that the students have the support and guidance they need then that is great and I hope that we can get some good articles out of this after all. I hope I haven't frightened them off. I will drop them each a message.

My concerns about meatpuppetry may or may not actually apply to this case but I am sure that an issue could arise under some circumstances. Imagine if a college seeking to raise the profile of its faculty staff handed out a list of the biographies they wanted created to students and set them to it. That would fall into the meatpuppetry category.

As I see it, nobody should be required to contribute to Wikipedia. These projects should be voluntary or have another option other than publishing on Wikipedia. Also, the students should have a significant degree of free choice about which biographies to write, with guidance to help them avoid picking non-notable people. So long as the students are not tied to a specific list then they should be safe from being considered meatpuppets. Working from a list seems like a grey area to me. If the list had an ulterior motive then there would definitely be a problem. --DanielRigal (talk) 10:45, 10 October 2010 (UTC)

Try to make contact with the teacher/professor and get them to "register" their project on Wikipedia:School and university projects. They will then get properly managed assistance and guidance. Roger (talk) 11:10, 10 October 2010 (UTC)

Many thanks for your generous support on this idea. It's great to see that this sort of thing is possible on Wikipedia. I'm the teacher/professor responsible for the actions that triggered this discussion. As suggested by Roger, I have now registered the project on (what is hopefully) the appropriate page. I'm not new to wikis but I've never really been in any way within the Wikipedia community. I'm hoping that this is the beginning of something that will be of benefit to all involved. --ToniSant (talk) 14:12, 10 October 2010 (UTC)