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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WikiProject:Deja vu - 15th MfD

Please !vote there. Rich Farmbrough, 19:08, 20 November 2011 (UTC).

Google Knol is scheduled to close on May 1

Apparently Google Knol will be disabled on May 1, 2012, so that posts are no longer publicly viewable. Hence we need to think about what to do with articles that have external links to Knol. There are about 380 such articles right now, and 866 total pages, that have these external links. I made a quick list at User:CBM/Knol. There is still a lot of time to plan out the best way to handle these - archive? remove? - but we should start soon. — Carl (CBM · talk) 03:02, 23 November 2011 (UTC)

That is May 1, 2012, isn't it? Another end-of-the-world scenario.— Arthur Rubin (talk) 03:11, 23 November 2011 (UTC)

Thanks, I typed the wrong year, it's fixed now. — Carl (CBM · talk) 03:16, 23 November 2011 (UTC)

Run a bot task to remove the links when it does shut down? I dunno... I'm more choked at how they keep f#%@ing with the news archive than I am the loss of Knol. Resolute 03:17, 23 November 2011 (UTC)

See http://wayback.archive.org/web/*/http://knol.google.com.

—Wavelength (talk) 16:44, 23 November 2011 (UTC)

Is there a way to let wayback.archive.org know that certain pages should be archived? Is it a simple matter of checking for older versions of each page that we link from? I would hate to see a mass-changeover of knoll links to wayback links only to find that a bunch of them didn't make it into the archives. --Guy Macon (talk) 16:54, 23 November 2011 (UTC)

Why are we linking to Knol pages at all? They are not a reliable source for anything. bd2412 T 18:11, 23 November 2011 (UTC)

It's a good question. I think most of them are probably external links, based on a small sample I looked at from my list. — Carl (CBM · talk) 18:15, 23 November 2011 (UTC)

Our current Knol article (not yet updated to indicate the closure of the project, by the way) states that "All contributions are licensed by default under the Creative Commons CC-BY-3.0 license (which allows anyone to reuse the material as long as the original author is named), but authors may choose the CC-BY-NC-3.0 license (which prohibits commercial reuse) or traditional all rights reserved copyright protections instead." It seems to me that if we want to keep some Knol info for historical value, we should just copy their page here, or maybe to Wikisource. bd2412 T 18:48, 23 November 2011 (UTC)

what is knol? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 96.255.28.159 (talk) 08:42, 26 November 2011 (UTC)

There are some nice pictures there, I wonder what the copyright on those is too or how one can find out. It would be nice to have as much of those as possible copied to commons but we'd need someone to automate checking the permissions and getting the author details in plus what they were associate with or annotated as. Dmcq (talk) 16:56, 26 November 2011 (UTC)

Wikipedia still has a major quality gap

Only 3% of Wiki eyeballs are on Good+ articles, only 31% on C+ articles.

Vital articles are 85% below Good.

Featured and Good Article programs are spending too much time on obscure subject and tending to become more obscure.

See analysis: PowerPoint: Wikipeida's poor treatment of its most important articles

69.255.27.249 (talk) 14:58, 23 November 2011 (UTC) (TCO)

Well, I think that "Good Article" is something like graduating cum laude: you don't need such mention in order to call yourself a graduate. Tgeorgescu (talk) 01:00, 24 November 2011 (UTC)

It seems to me that {{sofixit}} applies here. This is a volunteer service. If someone wants to volunteer to spend months perfecting an article about some obscure subject, then we're not going to stop them. If you want the "important" articles to be improved, then you need to roll up your shirt sleeves and get busy. WhatamIdoing (talk) 03:18, 27 November 2011 (UTC)

How do you determine whether or not an article topic is vital and requires some action to improve the quality? A lot of the most popular searched articles are on topics like celebrities (Kim Kardashian, Lady Gaga, Justin Bieber, Rihanna, Drake, Eminem), TV shows (How I Met Your Mother, Big Bang Theory), new movies, and so on. Hey, the people have spoken, and that's what they want to read. (-; For me, anything related to "hard science" is obscure, but I have nothing against anyone taking those articles and improving them to Good or FA article status. In fact, I think it's great. Yes, I also think it'd be even better if more people out there on the Internet would get involved and start improving the quality of articles that interest them. "Rome wasn't built in a day", though. It takes awhile to create high-quality articles on millions of topics through volunteer effort. OttawaAC (talk) 07:11, 27 November 2011 (UTC)

It's quite simple, really: A vital topic is one that I'm interested in; an obscure topic is one I don't care about. The same goes for you and everybody else. (So maybe it's not that simple, come to think of it.) - DavidWBrooks (talk) 12:42, 27 November 2011 (UTC)

I second the comments above. The presentation rests on a set of underlying assumptions which go largely undiscussed. Such as 'pop' = 'important' (with Lady Gaga presumably beating Percy Grainger). That anything popular below GA is "unsatisfactory". And, seemingly, that assiduous Wikipedia contributors should have their time managed to industry standards. But, hey, as WhatamIdoing points out, how about WP:VOLUNTEER? Or the escape slide?--MistyMorn (talk) 20:52, 27 November 2011 (UTC)

commons interwiki

At meta:Requests for comment/Wikimedia Commons there is strong support for "c:" being an alias for Wikimedia Commons. The two roadblocks are:

1. "C:" being an alias for "CAT:" on Hindi Wikipedia (resolved by Hindi Wikipedia community)
2. Projects which have articles that have a title starting with "C:" e.g. Special:Prefixindex/C: (unresolved by English Wikipedia community)

The issues on English Wikipedia are

1. three articles which start with "C:", being C:enter:pound, pound, pound, C:Real & C: The Contra Adventure
2. redirects to articles with significant history: C:\
3. redirects discussed at RfD which can be found at [[Talk:C:\Program Files]]: C:, C:\Program Files, C:/Program Files & C:\WINDOWS
4. redirects to articles without significant history: C: The Money of Soul and Possibility Control, C:tL and C:KND, C:N ratio & C:enter:
5. redirects to content categories: C:LIP (Lipograms) & C:MS (Microsoft)
6. redirect to admin categories: C:ATT, C:CVSD, C:PROD, C:SD, C:ATTACK, C:HM, C:FUR, C:NNSD, C:OMMONS, C:SPAM, C:AB, C:CSD, C:OTRS, C:UNB, C:NON, C:RTSP & C:Images
   most of these have a "CAT:" CAT:ATT, CAT:CVSD, CAT:PROD, CAT:SD, CAT:ATTACK, CAT:HM, CAT:FUR, CAT:NNSD, CAT:COMMONS, C:SPAM, CAT:AB, CAT:CSD, CAT:OTRS, CAT:UNB, CAT:NON, CAT:RTSP & CAT:Images
7. redirect to wikiproject categories: C:WPCATSUP & C:WPCATSUPT

I think we can address these without too much problem. The only degradation to the project is the three content articles which may need to be moved to a less accurate title. John Vandenberg ^(chat) 08:24, 24 November 2011 (UTC)

Now all of the C: redirects have a CAT: equivalent. --Philosopher ^{Let us reason together.} 18:31, 24 November 2011 (UTC)

Sorry, I meant all of the C: category redirects. --Philosopher ^{Let us reason together.} 18:37, 24 November 2011 (UTC)

I've left a note at [[Talk:C:Real#rename]] and [[Talk:C:_The_Contra_Adventure#rename]], and I see Sven has started an AFD at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/C:enter:pound, pound, pound (I hadnt thought of that approach, but it appear a very reasonable approach). John Vandenberg ^(chat) 21:42, 24 November 2011 (UTC)

Can we keep capital C: for the articles and only use lower case c: for the interwiki to commons? Graeme Bartlett (talk) 09:56, 25 November 2011 (UTC)

No; because the first letter of page names is not case-sensitive - and a hell of a lot of things depend on that fact.  Chzz  ►  16:34, 26 November 2011 (UTC)

I can't see any good reason for doing this, I'd have wondered if this was an April Fool joke causing trouble with C: in windows except we're not near April yet. It is not as though we have a burning need to put in direct links to commons all that often. Dmcq (talk) 17:14, 26 November 2011 (UTC)

The RFC on meta is still open if you want to oppose this. There are over 750 wmf projects which use Commons. Many of these project prohibit local uploads, which means they need to refer to Commons a lot. e.g. when telling a newbie how to upload, they need to link to the policy "commons:Commons:Scope" and friends. John Vandenberg ^(chat) 00:05, 27 November 2011 (UTC)

HTML defect in the copy-paste insertions for websites

I just made a donation online to the Wikimedia Foundation. On the return page there are a number of logo versions with copy-and-paste HTML to insert into one's website to help promote donations to the Foundation. As best I can tell, the coding provided -- while it may work Ok in some browsers -- is not well formed. The one I chose to use fails in my local syntax checker...

<A HREF="https://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Support_Wikipedia/en"> <IMG BORDER="0" ALT="Support Wikipedia" SRC="//upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/4b/Fundraising_2009-square-treasure-en.png"> </A>

The SRC="//upload.wiki... portion should read as SRC="http://upload.wiki....

The others that are offered have the same format problem. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Trailride (talk • contribs) 02:28, 25 November 2011 (UTC)

Thank you. Your post refers to wmf:2011/Support/en which transcludes wmf:Template:2010/Donate-support. The source of the latter uses {{filepath:}} which omits http://. Perhaps http:// should be added before {{filepath:}} but I don't have access or expertize. PrimeHunter (talk) 03:16, 25 November 2011 (UTC)

I have copied this to meta:Foundation wiki feedback#Template:2010/Donate-support. PrimeHunter (talk) 02:19, 26 November 2011 (UTC)

I let the fundraising team know.  :) Philippe Beaudette, Wikimedia Foundation (talk) 05:10, 29 November 2011 (UTC)

Thanks for the note guys. I don't think anyone caught this because it actually 'used' to give the full url but was changed to just do // because links on the Wikipedia and our other projects are now protorelative (if it sees // it uses either http or https depending on how you are viewing the site). I've tweaked them all to output a full https url that you can copy/paste. Jalexander--WMF 05:29, 29 November 2011 (UTC)

What were the most important discussions of the year?

Hi there, as some of you may know, I've recently brought the discussion report section of the Signpost back from the dead. I'm running it biweekly, and a DR came out on Monday. That means that there are two regular issues left this year, one on Dec 5, one on Dec 19.

I'm thinking of doing a special edition of the DR for the Dec. 26th issue, on "The most important discussions of the year", and for that, I need your help.

What were the most important discussions of the year? They can take any form that I cover in the report (so RfCs, proposals made at the village pump or elsewhere, surveys, noticeboard discussions, etc.). How you define important is up to you, it could be the one with the biggest impact, or one that had the most participation, or one that helped a specific group, changed a specific process, etc., and the discussion could have been closed as anything, successful, unsuccessful, no consensus, even archived without closure, it's all up to you what you want to suggest.

I'll choose about anywhere between a dozen and two dozen of the items brought up here, and include them. I won't accept recommendations posted anywhere other than here, and I won't accept recommendations unless you link me to them. Don't link using the secure server, I can't access it.

This one is all on you guys, I won't do the story if I don't get enough recommendations, and I won't cover any discussions (with the exception of one that I've already chosen) unless they're brought up here. Please get the recommendations in by December 22nd, so I have time to write everything up.

Sven Manguard Wha? 03:44, 25 November 2011 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Village pump (proposals)/Proposal to require autoconfirmed status in order to create articles and the follow on RFC Wikipedia:Village pump (proposals)/Proposal to require autoconfirmed status in order to create articles/Trial duration had some big implications for Wikipedia, but the Devs basically vetoed the idea, not for any technical reasons, but because they didn't agree with it. It was a bit of a kerfuffle earlier in the year, but it kinda petered out once the Devs put the kibosh on it. See Wikipedia:Autoconfirmed article creation trial and this bugzilla thread. --Jayron32 04:56, 25 November 2011 (UTC)

• Wikipedia:Hyperion Frobnosticating Endoswitch, of course. Chzz  ►  16:43, 26 November 2011 (UTC)

Request for Urgent comment, RFC on WP:ACE2011 seats to be filled

Due to unanticipated vacancies, there is a pressing question of how many Arbcom seats WP:ACE2011 should fill. Voting is scheduled to start in about 30 hours. Please comment at Wikipedia_talk:Arbitration_Committee_Elections_December_2011#Supplemental_RFC_on_number_of_seats_to_fill:_ACE2011. Monty₈₄₅ 16:15, 25 November 2011 (UTC)

Just a thought

Dear wikipedia people:

I sent a mail about 3 days ago and I got a reply that seemed just a little like a computer automated response. I am not blaming you in any way, but on the reply it was suggested to me that I posted my thoughts on this community. I went roughly through all the options to post, and this seemed the one that would give more chance of being listened rather tan archived. Also, when I went through the posts I got the feeling that you are very concerned about policies regarding the quality of the articles, technical issues, etc. But I think you need to look at your best known policy of NO ADDS, because I really believe that mutual collaboration with professional associations might be a nice way of posting adds, and earn collaboration from researchers and professionals in their respective branches of knowledge, and solve many of the other issues.

Again, I am a huge fan of your work, and when I have the chance I'll make a donation. If what Jimmy Wales said on his personal message is true, then I suspect you are a very little team doing an outstanding selfless job without much recognition or proper remuneration.

I'm gonna go ahead and post my little naive, somehow witty email I sent a few days ago, in the hopes that a human being takes a look at it, and just considers it for at least 2 seconds.

Hey!

I know advertising is messed up. I used to work as a market researcher for Procter and Gamble, so I know for sure. But I am also an unemployed well educated person that appreciates proper intellectual content thoroughly reviewed by actual experts in the field and cannot actually afford it. I am not taking a cheap shot at you guys, I really appreciate the work that you are doing, I also believe that knowledge is power and it should be free to help people who cannot afford it. But I have a problem when I find out that Britney Spears actually won the 1993 UEFA Champions League (so you say), because I know that there are persons who do not know that that is just a stupid person messing around with your wiki site. That bothers me very much

It also bothers me that it is a fad to take cheap shots at wikipedia, so I am just giving you my very naive ignorant thought:

Maybe if you team up with professional associations i.e. IEEE for the articles on that specific branch of knowledge, then a little banner with those guys logo wouldn't hurt anyone, would it?? And then, we all can get properly reviewed free information.

I know that you don't have the time read this, and that you probably have received this same email a million times, but then again, think about it a little bit more, would you??

Best Regards Samantha Serna Verenzuela PS: I apologize for any misspelling, grammar or out of context comment, but I am not a native English speaker — Preceding unsigned comment added by Samanthasernav (talk • contribs) 22:51, 25 November 2011 (UTC)

Thank you for your concern Samanthasernav. We are aware that sometimes vandalism can be a problem; with Wikipedia's open-editing model, it is a known concern, however the open-editing model is exactly why Wikipedia is that thing of which you are a "huge fan". If we limited that model in ways in which you suggest, it would be a matter of "Throwing out the baby with the bathwater"; i.e. by making it impossible for articles to be vandalized, we would also make it impossible for articles to be updated and improved in a timely manner. Fortunately, Wikipedia is also patrolled by thousands of editors who try to revert vandalism as soon as it occurs, occasionally something slips through, and I am truly sorry you got to see that. Understand that we are aware of these problems, but on the balance, we think that our model works better than any other would in terms of balancing openness with reliability. --Jayron32 02:33, 26 November 2011 (UTC)

(Technical) Wikipedia history

A specific question and more general questions which came out of it:

• When was Oversighting be established and when was removal by direct database access phased out (as far as we know)? Where can old discussion of this transitions be found. Looking into old versions of Wikipedia:Oversight and its talk page doesn't really reach back far enough.
• Generally speaking, is there a good place to look for Wikipedia history outside the article namespace? I mean for technical, policy, and community history?
• I'm also wondering how utopian it would be to not only go back into the history of one page, but set a global date for Wikipedia and browse Wikipedia as it existed on that date. Is there any hope that the database structure could effectively support such a use case?

--Pjacobi (talk) 11:23, 26 November 2011 (UTC)

On #3, I saw someone recently talking about downloading database dumps from a particular day, which would let you browse Wikipedia (sort of) like it existed on that date (sort of, because I have the impression that the database dumps don't include images). I'm not sure what kind of computer set up you would need for such an undertaking. WhatamIdoing (talk) 03:38, 27 November 2011 (UTC)

The problem with that is that db dumps exclude deleted stuff. True history viewing would not be that hard technically, in terms of transclusion we have emulated it with template {{Expand}} for example. You could do probably the article level stuff with a little glue sealing wax and javascript. Rich Farmbrough, 17:33, 30 November 2011 (UTC).

Albemarle County, Virginia

Someone has been adding Albemarle County, Virginia templates to biographical articles which have no relevance to Virginia. Whoever is doing this, cut it out! And if some fan of Albemarle County, Virginia can take the time, each of the entries in the category should be checked for relevance. I removed the template from Talk:Murray Merle Schwartz, but I am sure there are others. --DThomsen8 (talk) 02:43, 28 November 2011 (UTC)

Looks like it was User:AnomieBOT. Best to leave a message there and see just how many got tagged. Rmhermen (talk) 02:53, 28 November 2011 (UTC)

Question

Can someone compile the average page views per month using data from October 2011 from stats.grok.se for articles here — to be specific, all articles under "Storm sciences, hurricane seasons and storm effects", "Tropical cyclones: Atlantic", "Tropical cyclones: Eastern Pacific", "Tropical cyclones: Northwestern Pacific", and "Tropical cyclones: Southern Pacific and the Indian Ocean" excluding Maximum sustained wind, Mesoscale convective system, and Outflow (meteorology) (of which those three are under "Storm sciences, hurricane seasons, and storm effects"). Thanks. HurricaneFan25 15:34, 28 November 2011 (UTC)

Why don't articles about cities represent how those cities really look like?

Why don't articles about cities represent how those cities really look like? Take Kinshasa or Cairo as examples. The words "poor" or "poverty" don't appear even once in the article Cairo, even though it is a very poor and dense city where less than 20% of the people have computers. Also take a look at the pictures, they don't represent how these cities look in any way (most of Kinshasa is supposed to be extremely poor and primitive yet it doesn't appear in the article).

It happens in other articles as well, and not only in third world countries. Take the city where I live, Tel Aviv, as an example: over half of the people in southern Tel Aviv are immigrators and refugees from Africa (mainly from Sudan and Eritrea that by the way, are also not represented in a neutral way), yet there are no pictures or information about it. Only the main attractions in the city appear in Photoshopped pictures.

So what can be done with this matter? Most of the articles about cities look like the country's ministry of tourism edited them to make people want to come there. Check out your city's page if you want a proof-- Someone35  19:31, 28 November 2011 (UTC)

If you have established sources that discuss the "ugly" parts of a city (like your examples) and you can get free photos of that, then they certainly can be included into the city article to talk about , for example, the distribution of wealth or immigrants or the like. But you do need sources that affirm this. --MASEM (t) 19:34, 28 November 2011 (UTC)

I'd pretty much agree with "Someone35" on this. There is a need to have better information about the less glorious aspects of cities, like the poverty and crime rates, the state of transportation and sanitation. I'm sure information about these topics exists (extensively for many cities) yet it seems not to get included in articles. There's a definite tendency for articles to only point-out the good or interesting aspects of a city, and often ignore the bad parts, this is clearly true of photographs. For example, back in 2009 I complained on the talk page of the Baghdad article (here), that there was no mention at all of the war that was then (or still is) raging in the city. No mention of the sectarian civil war, the massacres, the bombings, etc. Now, since then there has been some improvement in that article, but I still don't think it comes close to covering the subject. The article of my own city Dublin has no mention of the major problems like Heroin addiction and Homelessness that are prevalent on the city's streets (and that anyone who's been there will see walking around). I don't really know what can be done about this though, I guess it's a cultural thing, the people who are writing the city articles probably mostly come from those cities, so they don't really want to have negative information appearing about their home town, maybe it needs to be made clear in some of the policies that good and bad must be represented in these articles. --Hibernian (talk) 01:22, 29 November 2011 (UTC)

It seems trite, but WP:SOFIXIT. If it's sourced and not a coatrack, go for it. --Golbez (talk) 06:29, 29 November 2011 (UTC)

I'd say that there are also plenty of articles that have the opposite problem. Particularily small locations, which got mentioned once in Western press on some tragedy get that as their 80% coverage. --Soman (talk) 06:41, 29 November 2011 (UTC)

I think the only way to fix this is by following the standard wiki process by trying to bring articles into line with our neutrality policy one at a time. I agree with Soman above that this works both ways, and the problem isn't only with non-Western places. Anyone reading Ardoyne would think that this 20,000-strong community only existed as a battlefield. Phil Bridger (talk) 19:12, 29 November 2011 (UTC)

As long as no Wikipedia article ever begins with the words "X is a city of contrasts", then all is good. Rich Farmbrough, 17:23, 30 November 2011 (UTC).

Bother. Heilongjiang. Rich Farmbrough, 17:26, 30 November 2011 (UTC).

Concerns about User:Dierk Lange

I posted this nearly 2 weeks ago on the WikiProject Africa talk page (here), where I thought it might provoke some discussion, but since no one there has shown any interest I'm posting it here, in the hope that someone can either begin to deal with it, or at least tell me where would be a better place to bring this up.

Anyway, I have noticed over the last few months that User:Dierk Lange has been extensively editing many articles on African history (such as Kanem-Bornu Empire, Oyo Empire, etc.) and referencing many of his additions with papers and article which he himself has authored. Now I'm not sure what the Wiki policy on this is exactly, clearly people are not allowed to reference things that they have published themselves, but some of these articles he cites seem to have been published in what appear to be real historical journals (Anthropos, Working Papers in African Studies, etc.), though I have no idea whether they are considered legitimate or not. Essentially, Dierk Lange seems to be inserting significant amounts of his own theories into articles, now I don't claim to be an expert in this area, but frankly most of it does not sound like "Mainstream" history (i.e. theories about African kingdoms being founded by the Lost Tribes of Israel, or the ancient Assyrian Empire, etc. You can read all about it at his personal Website: http://dierklange.com/). Some editors have challenged his additions, but there hasn't really been much debate about it (as far as I can tell). As I don't know enough about the subjects, I've felt unable to really deal with it, but seeing more and more of Dierk Lange's theories being put in numerous articles seems (at the very least) to be Undue Weight. Does anyone else have the same concerns, and if so what should be done?--Hibernian (talk) 01:29, 29 November 2011 (UTC)

Have you tried raising these concerns at WP:COIN? --Jayron32 05:43, 29 November 2011 (UTC)

The relevant advice section is WP:CITESELF. WhatamIdoing (talk) 15:24, 1 December 2011 (UTC)

Ok, thanks for those links. I've got somewhat of a discussion going about the issue over at WikiProject Africa, so I'll try to see what other people think before going further (anyone here is also welcome to give an opinion). --Hibernian (talk) 01:52, 2 December 2011 (UTC)

Research about Wikipedia: Methodologies

Hi all, I was wondering if anybody knew some interesting scientific papers about appropriate methodologies in qualitative research in order to study talk pages on Wikipedia. I know the meta research portal ; and I've seen the list of all publications about WP. But it is quite specific and it is a waste of time to read all of them if one of you had some advice. Thanks a lot... — Preceding unsigned comment added by 109.128.108.84 (talk) 10:33, 29 November 2011 (UTC)

Where's the meta research portal and that list of all publications about WP? -Anthonyhcole (talk) 13:43, 2 December 2011 (UTC)

Experimental new banners

We're going to be testing some experimental new fundraising banners in the next few days (for anonymous users). Just a heads up. Kaldari (talk) 22:13, 29 November 2011 (UTC)

Like the one that green banner at the bottom of the screen? Great... ĐARKJEDI10 23:57, 29 November 2011 (UTC)

What green banner? HurricaneFan25 00:02, 30 November 2011 (UTC)

He's probably talking about this one. We're currently testing that one for 1 hour in the US as an experiment. Kaldari (talk) 00:43, 30 November 2011 (UTC)

So... feedback-wise; I loathe it and spent ten minutes trying to find the right page to complain. Not donating to Wikimedia this Christmas. --68.57.11.96 (talk) 00:51, 30 November 2011 (UTC)

Please never, ever do anything like this again. --brion (talk) 01:11, 30 November 2011 (UTC)

Here's one of the other ones we tried. Much lower donation numbers, but more positive feedback from users (which is about what we were expecting). Kaldari (talk) 00:44, 1 December 2011 (UTC)

Template:map considered desirable

There are lots of templates for tagging an article as needing different kinds of improvements, but there is no template {{map}} — at least, that's what I imagine it ought to be called — to say "this article would be more understandable if it included a map, or a better map than it has".

If there is a template with this meaning already, what's it called? --142.205.241.254 (talk) 00:45, 30 November 2011 (UTC)

This would probably go better on the talk page - there are things like {{Image requested}}. Rich Farmbrough, 17:16, 30 November 2011 (UTC).

In fact what you want is {{Map requested}}. Rich Farmbrough, 17:18, 30 November 2011 (UTC).

Thanks! (OP at different IP address) --65.92.2.220 (talk) 07:31, 1 December 2011 (UTC)

Time-sensitive redirects

I have just created User:Thryduulf/List of time-sensitive redirects to keep track of redirects like that have a need to be updated periodically (e.g. Recent deaths). Please add any others you know about. Thryduulf (talk) 21:14, 30 November 2011 (UTC)

Archving video and audio

So I just learned that the video game magazine GamePro and their website will be going down on December 5. They have some podcasts (I've downloaded relevant ones for articles I work on to my hard drive already), but is there any place anyone knows these could be archived by for archiving purposes? Failing that, any good places I could upload the podcasts to?

What about java-based video such as on youtube (i have a news broadcast that I can only find there)? I'm not certain whether WebCite doesn't appear to archive mp3s or those java videos, especially the latter.∞陣内Jinnai 23:36, 30 November 2011 (UTC)

Statistics page concern

Please correct me if I'm not on the right track. On the Statistics page (click the # of articles link from the Main Page under the "free encyclopedia that anyone can edit" slogan), I found a curious "stat" under "Founder": "1". I don't know if Mr. Wales had anything to do with this, but I had assumed the arrogant propaganda that he and others have put out insisting that he was the only founder to have died off long ago. He may still think of himself as the sole founder, but I was under the impression that he stopped pressing the issue since the controversy became so well known. So what's going on? Is someone figuring that no one looks at the Statistics page? I do, and I think this subtle omission of Larry Sanger's role in starting this wiki up is stubborn idiocy of the highest order. Larry suggested the wiki format in the first place, among other things. Wikipedia as we know it might have not even existed without Larry--almost 4 million free articles may not have been at our disposal. So if there are Larry haters out there, can they please keep their venomous grudge out of the statistics page? Again, set me straight if I'm off base, but Jimmy_Wales#Controversy indicates that Wales contradicted himself over time to serve his own agenda. He went from calling himself a co-founder early on to editing his own article to remove referenced material which identified Larry as a co-founder. I don't understand why the guy (Wales) who has tried re-writing history to omit Larry's role has always garnered more credibility... 67.182.237.57 (talk) 04:59, 1 December 2011 (UTC)

Oh, also....I'm not sure if this is the right place for me to address this concern. Thanks. 67.182.237.57 (talk) 05:00, 1 December 2011 (UTC)

It's a user-right which gives Jimmy Wales certain privileges at English Wikipedia. It should be noted that he has voluntarily relinquished almost all of these; I believe that the last remnant of his superpowers he still uses the right to appoint the ArbCom members officially (though he always appoints the winners of the ArbCom elections). Yes, Larry Sanger did co-found Wikipedia, but he has not been involved in the project in many years. I think he actually got himself banned at one point. --Jayron32 05:28, 1 December 2011 (UTC)

Thanks for responding so quick and providing insight. "ArbCom" is the Arbitrary Committee, correct? I didn't know Sanger got banned. If this really did happen, is there any way I can search the Wikipedia archives and try and find out when it happened? I am not sure something that old is readily available; nevertheless, curiosity has gotten a hold of me. Thank you in advance. 67.182.237.57 (talk) 01:06, 3 December 2011 (UTC)

RfC about AWB template redirects

An RfC about the changes to template redirects by AWB has been started at Wikipedia talk:AutoWikiBrowser#RfC on Template redirects. Fram (talk) 09:12, 1 December 2011 (UTC)

Suicidal editors

I was trawling through Wikipedia when I cam across this, and I was wondering if anyone knew why it was failed. Surely if someone has turned to Wikipedia then we need to get advice from professionals to help train editors to deal with this kind of thing should they come across it. I accept the fact that many of these messages will be vandals but surely we should treat it as serrious until we can confirm otherwise. Oddbodz (talk) 20:23, 1 December 2011 (UTC)

That was supplanted by Wikipedia:Responding to threats of harm. Basically, we are not and cannot expect anonymous volunteers to be able to be trained to adequately deal with the situation. Basically, the current procedure is to email the foundation at the "emergency" email, and let them handle it. --Jayron32 20:34, 1 December 2011 (UTC)

Oh ok. Thanks. Oddbodz (talk) 21:41, 1 December 2011 (UTC)

Very few, if any, of us who come across any of the legitimate messages are trained to deal with such responses. In those situations of legitimate suicide messages, you need to forward them to the WMF immediately as well as to anyone admin you can grab (preferably with CheckUser permissions, as they can they and pinpoint where they are at and can get the appropriate police information). While there is a concern with bystander effect in not responding directly, if whatever you say something that makes it worse, and that person ends up killing him/herself, then that unqualified individual who responded will need to take responsibility for any legal actions that may result in said death, in which the WMF may not be able to provide any protection. –MuZemike 22:14, 1 December 2011 (UTC)

Consensus for a site-wide banner during elections, yet there isn't any banner

Can users please check out Wikipedia_talk:Arbitration_Committee_Elections_December_2011#Sitenotice and leave comments and suggestions? --Michaeldsuarez (talk) 00:36, 2 December 2011 (UTC)

Psychiatric profile and demographics of Wikipedia editors

Can someone point me to a review of any research into the psychiatric profile and demographics of Wikipedia editors? --Anthonyhcole (talk) 13:23, 2 December 2011 (UTC)

Well there's a few scholar ghits under "wikipedia editors study". None of them quite look like what you're seeking though. My personal experience is that Wikipedia editors are quite a diverse bunch, so I'm not sure you'd be able to pidgeon hole the entire population very concisely. You could probably spot a few trends though. Regards, RJH (talk) 20:46, 2 December 2011 (UTC)

GOD Tech: Mark of the Beast

Simply put.. there is no page on Wikipedia that I can find that relates to my book listed in the subject heading. I havent got anyone else to write about it and Wikipedia advises you dont write about your own story - so what do I do? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Norwayadventure2010 (talk • contribs) 14:35, 2 December 2011 (UTC)

Does your book meet the notability guidelines for books? That is, is it given non-trivial coverage by multiple reliable sources unaffiliated with your, your book, or its publishers? By reliable sources, I mean news sources from across the nation (but not press releases), academic reviews, or coverage of it winning major literary awards. Ian.thomson (talk) 14:45, 2 December 2011 (UTC)

No not yet, so now I know what I need, I can get that. Thank you for your help. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Norwayadventure2010 (talk • contribs) 14:54, 2 December 2011 (UTC)

Widespread grammatical issue with collective nouns

As there is no wikiproject English language, I am posting here. There is a widespread issue of poor grammar regarding the grammatical number of collective nouns in Wikipedia. The names of mountain ranges, taxa of living species, military grouping, teams and bands are singular collectives proper nouns and even when these stem from plurals (Pinker's headless nouns), as they often are. E.g. the Alps is a mountain range and the Foo fighters is a band. The problem is that often collective nouns are erroneously treaded as plurals as it sounds "kind of right": *A flock of birds are flying (the asterisk and the bond in the sense following grammar textbooks, not wikipedia forums). This is mistake is so common that often in newspapers it appears either by accident or purposefully to not sound pretentious.
A lot of wikipedia pages about sports teams and musical bands make this mistake, even big ones such as the Boston Red Sox. The Glasgow Warriors is treated erroneously as a plural, while Bath Rugby is correctly a singular noun; the Welsh Guards is treated as singular or plural depending on the paragraph. And so forth.

I should also point out that the name for a subset of members of a team is plural (e.g. The All Blacks, the NZ team, has recently won the RWC. Several all-blacks have hurt themselves in doing some. One all-black has ripped his thigh.)

I do not know how can this problem be fixed. A single person editing each team individually is unfeasible, so it needs to be distributed to the page watchers. How can this be done? Should a banner be made for talk pages? --Squidonius (talk) 21:04, 2 December 2011 (UTC)

Before you attempt to 'fix' the problem, I suggest you do a little more research. As far as British English is concerned, the Rolling Stones are a band and Chelsea are a football team. AndyTheGrump (talk) 21:14, 2 December 2011 (UTC)

I apologise for having to disagree, but I am quite sure the two examples given are not technically correct in both Queen's or US English — but they do sound right at first glance. The problem stems from the concept of "concord", where the subject must agree in gender and number with the verb and subject complement (if present). In the given examples "a band" is singular and the copular verb ("to be") is plural, implying that they are not in agreement. This is apparent if the predicate is transformed into a noun in apposition which must still obey concord: "The Rolling Stones, a famous band, was based in Chelsea." "Chelsea, an English football team, is in the lead." Concord does not apply when the collective names are used adjectival nouns ("The Rolling Stones band plays tonight", "The Chelsea football team plays tonight" and "The Rolling Stones fans cheer".) which is a different kettle of fish.

A lot of article obey this rule, an example of an article written in British English that obeys concord is the page for the Mendip Hills (with a capital H for hills). The English language does not have a central authority, such as the Académie française, so if a mistake is widespread enough it becomes acceptable and is no longer a mistake, such as split infinitives. To the best of my knowledge, concord, however, still holds. --Squidonius (talk) 22:22, 2 December 2011 (UTC)

Thank goodness we don't have an equivalent to Académie française. French ceased to be an international language because the French language ran out of new 'officially sanctioned' words to describe the rapidly evolving World and modernity. C'est la vie! --Aspro (talk) 23:12, 2 December 2011 (UTC)

See MOS:PLURALS. AndyTheGrump (talk) 22:31, 2 December 2011 (UTC)

You may also be interested in what Fowler had to say about it in his book the King's English in 1908:

Though nouns of multitude may be freely used with either a singular or a plural verb, or be referred to by pronouns of singular or plural meaning, they should not have both (except for special reasons and upon deliberation) in the same sentence...

Which is pretty good evidence that sentences like "the band are playing" have been considered good English in Britain for over a century. garik (talk) 23:32, 2 December 2011 (UTC)

I gladly apologise for my mistake (as I have learnt something new today). Thank you, Garik, both for finding the reference and for making it apparent to me that Fowler can be found online — I am quite excited by latter. So a collective noun can be either, depending on which is less awkward: this means that the MOS:PLURALS policy may require correcting. On the flipside, if the Académie anglais were to exist, the OED would not have the adjective "bootilicious" as "callipygian" would suffice as it means the same thing — and it sounds infinitely nicer. --Squidonius (talk) 00:17, 3 December 2011 (UTC)