Community bulletin board

2010-08-30 News and notes: Most linked websites on Wikipedia, New York Wiki-Conference, and more In the news: Agatha Christie spoiled, Wales on Wikileaks, University students improve Wikipedia, and more WikiProject report: Studying WikiProject Universities Features and admins: Featured article milestone: 3,000 Arbitration report: What does the Race and intelligence case tell us? Technology report: Reusability of MediaWiki code, Google Summer of Code: Interwiki transclusion, and more About·Archives·Single-page·Newsroom·Suggestions Centralized discussion Discussion: Should the help landing page be replaced with something much simpler? A draft redesign is in progress. Straw poll: How many times can an AfD be relisted? If not indefinitely, how to close an AfD with insufficient participation? Straw poll: should the pending changes protection trial be continued or abandoned? RfC: What should be the inclusion criteria for "List of X" articles? RfC: Are symbols as usernames allowable? Proposal to create a new WikiProject namespace Discussion about which links & references to sites on the now-closed GeoCities web host to rescue, and how. RfC: Does WP:NAMES apply to fictional characters? RfC: Is there consensus to include support for microformats in templates? RfC on the idea of removing highly inactive bureaucrats. Discussion about changing the Picture Of The Day/Today's Featured Picture selection process to deal with the huge backlog in the queue. RfC: Regarding the use of italics in article titles and if their use should be dictated by a single guideline, or decided by each individual WikiProject

Notices

• The Public Policy Initiative is recruiting Wikipedian for an assessment testing team, to help test out our trial assessment system (a more detailed rating system compatible with the standard Wikipedia 1.0 system). Team members will test the consistency of the metric and look for discrepancies between Wikipedian assessment and subject matter expert assessment. This work will play a crucial role in the evaluation of the public policy project and could lead to valuable insight as the foundation and community begin to work toward improving assessment within Wikipedia. Please check out the project assessment page or contact ARoth (Public Policy Initiative) for more info.

• The Wikimedia Foundation is seeking volunteers to be flown to San Francisco for a long weekend in late September (airfare and all living expenses will be paid by the Foundation), to create resources for editors interested in doing instructional screencasts. You don't need to have ever created a screencast, but you should be an experienced Wikipedia editor with some involvement in teaching/training/helping others with Wikipedia editing. Apply here by September 1.

Project pages seeking contributors

Discussions

Discussions in the following areas have requested wider attention:

Help out

Wikipedia is, by number of articles, the largest encyclopedia ever to exist. However, many articles are stubs, or otherwise need attention. If you like, go ahead, be bold, and jump right in. If you are not ready to fly solo, you can participate in a Collaboration.

Things to do

General tasks

• Patrol new pages and help improve new articles.
• Category:Wikipedia backlog always needs attention.
• Assess articles by quality or by importance—pick a topic of interest and grade according to that WikiProject's scale. (See links from article talk pages.)
• Adopt a basic topic list (Outline), to help develop and maintain a table of contents to a major subject on Wikipedia.
• Let SuggestBot suggest pages for you to improve.
• Update pages with old (ref or note template) citations to the new references format.
• Do you have a historical perspective? Articles slanted towards recent events might need to be looked at with a new eye.

Commenting

• Respond to a request for comment, Wikiquette alert or provide a third opinion.
• Give a requested editor review.
• Peer review or give feedback on some articles.
• Comment at Featured portal candidates and Portals at peer review.
• Make recommendations on articles listed at Good article reassessment.
• Respond to the Reward board or Bounty board.

Special skills

• Can you draw or take pictures? Make a requested image.
• Are you good at photo editing? Then try cleaning up some of these images, or helping out at the Graphics Lab.
• Can you use GIS tools? Help make requested maps.
• Can you communicate in another language? There are articles that need translation into English. You can also proofread a translation.

Fix-up projects

Open tasks

Here are some tasks you can do:

• Wikify: Jaqueline Nakiri, Arthur Hair, Pointer machine, Southern Fried Stings, List of Episodes in Ishaan, More...
• Copyedit: Peace Corps, Ford SVT Contour, Trivikram Srinivas, Squirtgun (album), Yrjö Karilas, More...
• Update: Militaria, Toni Daggert, Uganda Under-19 cricket team, USA Under-19 cricket team, Scotland Under-19 cricket team, More...
• Style: Harold La Borde, Tracy Quartermaine, Alan Turner (Emmerdale), Galactik Football, Air source heat pumps, More...
• Translation: Eliseyev Emporium (Saint Petersburg), Church of Our Lady the Merciful, 2 Rossi Street, Museum of Optical Technologies, Narvskaya, More...
• Cleanup: Lacandon, Telemetry, Achinoam Nini, Dale Gribble, Muhamalai Forward Defence Line, More...
• Verify: Green Heron, Risk factors for breast cancer, Peter Collins (footballer), Milk fever, Accessory tragus, More...
• Neutrality: Freight equalization policy, St. Joe's – Temple rivalry, Persecution of Christians in Warsaw Pact countries, Inkjet printable DVD, Metter, Georgia, More...
• Original research: Straight Up (song), Konami's Ping Pong, Wah Chang, Diseconomy of scale, UNIT dating controversy, More...
• Merge: Mr. Happy and the Wizard, Little Miss Splendid and the Princess, Gensing, East Sussex, Textile processing, Japanese family structure, More...
• Split: Çeng, Mineralocorticoid, Ipswich Grammar School, History of Delta Air Lines, Community gardening, More...
• Stubs: ABC@Home, Mark Gray (pool player), Chio Min, Love Berry, Morning of the Earth, More...
• Expand: Shaji Kailas, Mouthwash, Zévaco, Zérubia, Valle-di-Mezzana, More...
• Article Incubator: Unreferenced BLPs/Alejandro Petra, Unreferenced BLPs/Alan Solomons, Divorced Guys, Engineered bamboo, Procedure Proficiency Software, More...
• Article deletion discussions: Lists of people, Africa, Gapung Station, Medicine, Academics and educators, More...
• Article Requests: Agriculture in Malaysia, Crandall syndrome, Suze Groeneweg, Tourism in Jamaica, Fauna of Kenya, More...
• Image Requests: Salvia eigii, Madagascar Serpent-eagle, UEFA European Football Championship mascot, Space Harp, More...
• Mediation Cabal: Kimchi, Six-Day War, Valve Anti-Cheat, Hinduism, Prem Rawat, Charles County, Maryland, ESR meter, Chiropractic, or Help mediate an open case!

Not sure where to report a certain type of problem with article content? If it exists, it is probably listed at Wikipedia:Maintenance.

Purge

Collaborations

To improve the quality of articles that are short or lacking in detail, Wikipedia's community organizes collaborations to expand articles.

Collaborations by topic

Other collaborations

Active improvement teams

• Countering systemic bias
• Version 1.0
• Spam fighting team
• Categorization projects
• Spotlight

WikiProjects

WikiProjects are ongoing team efforts to improve articles having to do with a particular subject, and to manage the logistics of that topic. Hundreds exist—examine the master list to find one that interests you.

Language translation

Wikipedia is not just in English. Versions exist in many different languages. To fill in some of the English Wikipedia's gaps, we translate articles from other languages into English. You can view a list of articles that need translation from any language, or, in a few cases, by only one language (this is only available for the more popular languages).

Guidelines, help & resources

Wikipedia has many help pages, policies, and departments. Here are some of the most general. For a comprehensive list of Wikipedia's departments, see the Wikipedia department directory.

Help

• Wikipedia help contents – Browse help pages
• Help desk
• Where to ask questions

Editing

• The Manual of Style guidelines and tutorial
• How to edit a page
• Contributing
• How to write a great article
• A list of free online resources for research
• A list of template messages
• What special pages are
• Tools for editing
• Request newspapers or magazines

Policies and guidelines

Wikipedia has many established policies, guidelines, conventions, and traditions. This is a very brief sampling of some of the most important; for more information, see the main policies and guidelines page. Policies and guidelines apply to both articles and how to work with fellow editors. For easy access, the shortcuts to the pages are also listed.

Article standards

Working with others

Resources

New user information

Introduction · Sandbox · Help · Adoption · What Wikipedia is not · Glossary · Account benefits · Planning school assignments · New contributors' help page · FAQ

Ways to communicate

Contact (overview) · Discussion pages · Mailing lists · IRC chat · Meetups · User pages · Requests for comment · Public watchlists · Regional notice boards · Administrators' noticeboard · Requests for article feedback · Local Embassy

Community support groups and programs

Welcoming committee · Editor assistance · Wiki-adoption · Birthday Committee · Harmonious editing club · Wikipedia awards program · Dept. of Fun · Missing encyclopedic articles

Common procedures

Featured content · Good articles · Requests for feedback · Deleting a page (full policy) · Moving a page (naming policies) · Protecting a page (full policy) · Reverting a page · Administrator nominations (summaries) · Category-based access

How to resolve conflicts

Stay cool! · Be nice to newcomers · Alert others · Dispute resolution · Arbitration policy

Community information

About Wikipedia · Goings-on · About Wikimedia · Wikipedians · Wiki-adoption · Donations · Merchandise · Administrators · Babel · Culture · Games · Humor · Mottoes

Related communities

Tip of the day

Here's how to install a nifty little program called Navigation Popups to enhance your Wikipedia account.

• Step 1:    You must have a user account in order to install and use the Navigation popups feature. If you do not have an account you will need to create one and log in.

• Step 2:    Copy this: {{subst:navpop}}

• Step 3:    to your vector.js page.

• Step 4:    Save the page.

• Step 5:    Clear your browser's cache (Mozilla/Firefox/Safari: Shift+Reload, or Ctrl+F5 or Ctrl+R (Command+R on a Macintosh); Konqueror: Reload or F5; Opera: clear the cache in Tools → Preferences; Internet Explorer: Ctrl+Refresh, or Ctrl+F5. ).

Assuming that you have not disabled javascript in your browser, a useful popup should appear whenever you hover your mouse over an internal link in Wikipedia.

The above operation will add the Navigation Popups program to your .js file.

Note: If you are using a skin other than Vector (the default), the relevant file you will need to edit is listed below.

• Classic skin: standard.js
• Cologne Blue: cologneblue.js
• Chick: chick.js
• Simple: simple.js
• Nostalgia: nostalgia.js
• MySkin: myskin.js
• Modern: modern.js
• Monobook: monobook.js

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