Talk:Wikipedia/Archive 16

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Larry Sanger? No Larry Sanger?

Look, I have no opinion on this, but the edit warring has to stop. Please discuss proposed changes to the infobox's "Author:" attribute here before making them. =David^(talk)_(contribs) 01:50, 21 September 2007 (UTC)

I'm willing to discuss it. Jimbo told me on the IRC channel that he founded wikipedia himself.--Trulexicon 04:27, 25 September 2007 (UTC)

That is not verifiable ;-). --Stephan Schulz 04:43, 25 September 2007 (UTC)

Sure it is: <ref>Jimbo told me</ref>. :) Richard001 08:42, 27 October 2007 (UTC)

article about wikipedia on wikipedia?????

why?Mariofan1000 20:50, 22 September 2007 (UTC)

Because Wikipedia itself, just like, say, Encyclopedia Brittanica, is a subject worthy of an article, of discussion. -- Anonymous Dissident^Talk 22:24, 22 September 2007 (UTC)

This kind of reasoning is just plein wrong, Brittanica's history spans more than 100 years, Wikipedia is very new and won't be comprably old enough in our lifetime presuming it'll continue. Going with this logic if a new watch brand appears today, then it deserves an article just because there is an entry for Rolex. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 38.99.101.131 (talk) 14:39, 3 November 2007 (UTC)

Encyclopedia Brittanica has an article on Wikipedia as well. It also has one on wikis, Jimmy Wales, and Stephen Colbert, and itself. While we should avoid self-references, going out of our way to do so is also kind of a self-reference. Richard001 08:42, 27 October 2007 (UTC)

This article should be written in first person.

After all, in a sense, wikipedia is talking about itself. Therefore it is possible that the wiki is conscious, and should be construed as an "I". Xhin Give Back Our Membership! 03:44, 23 September 2007 (UTC)

What exactly are you saying? It doesn't really make sense. If you are suggesting that Wikipedia should be referred to in this article in the first person, then you are being ridiculous. -- Anonymous Dissident^Talk 06:31, 25 September 2007 (UTC)

This article is like any other article on here, and so it should be written like other articles, and should not be treated any differently. Sebi _[talk] 06:37, 25 September 2007 (UTC)

See also avoid self references. Richard001 08:42, 27 October 2007 (UTC)

Dumb Question

What was the first article created on Wikipedia. I have had a look around but I have only found editors/articles from July 01.134.148.5.119 09:30, 25 September 2007 (UTC)

I'd guess a tie between all the articles imported from Nupedia? See Wikipedia:Nupedia and Wikipedia for a list, including weird things like Donegal fiddle tradition which I believe was originally written by Larry Sanger. 68.175.102.171 04:06, 26 September 2007 (UTC)

See Wikipedia:UuU for the oldest surviving edit on wikipedia. ffm 20:40, 17 October 2007 (UTC)

Audio file

The audio file really needs to be updated. Any volunteers?Randomblue 18:47, 27 September 2007 (UTC)

Have added to the to do list. Suggest we wait until this article is in really good shape, possibly FA again (one day?). Richard001 08:42, 27 October 2007 (UTC)

Google Search Results

I've noticed recently that google has started giving brief summaries of the contents of wiki pages instead of the first sentence or two from the page itself as is usually the case with google search results. As an example, searching for "Arabic Language" the search result for wiki is "Wikipedia article, with links to other articles on Modern Standard and Classical Arabic, as well as other varieties of the language." Is this a google thing or is it a wikipedia thing? TheStripèdOne 16:18, 28 September 2007 (UTC)

They're all in cahoots, mate.59.167.86.232 17:01, 30 October 2007 (UTC)

Wikipedia fork

Wikipedia fork redirects to this article. I think the article should say something more about the over 500 Wikipedia forks. Should we use Wikipedia:Mirrors and forks as a reference for that number, or is that too self-referential? --75.48.165.135 15:07, 1 October 2007 (UTC)

It used to redirect to Wikipedia:Sites using MediaWiki, that might be a good idea to make it point to Wikipedia:Mirrors and forks but that's would be a cross namespace redirect. -- lucasbfr ^talk (using User:Lucasbfr2) 15:09, 1 October 2007 (UTC)

Unsourced statement removed

I am removing the following statement as it has been tagged as needing a source for several months:

• Because of the nature of the "copyleft" license Wikipedia uses, Wikipedia's content has been mirrored and forked by many sites including database dumps.

If anyone can add a source for this, feel free to re-add it. —Angr 19:13, 1 October 2007 (UTC)

I support your decision --Youhavenolife 14:25, 4 October 2007 (UTC)

See WP:MIRROR. ffm 13:05, 5 October 2007 (UTC)

What is the non-free material?

Many language versions of Wikipedia are free content, while others, such as the English version, include non-free material.--71.234.97.27 21:29, 4 October 2007 (UTC)

For example, the English Wikipedia includes album covers on articles. Other WP, like the French one, don't do that. You can read more at WP:NFC. -- lucasbfr ^talk 21:38, 4 October 2007 (UTC)

The text should probably be more specific here. We're talking about media, right? Richard001 08:42, 27 October 2007 (UTC)

Broken Links

Was discussing irony of criticism against wikipedia for lack of proper citations (had a cite on that XD) went to visit the site listed and was unable to access the page. Someone should look into this, it managed to get wikipedia nearly banned here. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Morphoray (talk • contribs) 19:07, 8 October 2007 (UTC)

Idea

Wikipedia should let people upload music to certain sites that the music would aply to. Then People could listen to music while there reading.

The music would have to be freely licensed, though. —Angr 14:50, 10 October 2007 (UTC)

hehehe... How would this music "apply"? A subtle orchestral score for an article on a monument?Macau DV 10:39, 6 November 2007 (UTC)

Article locked, can someone do an edit by proxy please?

Following is too petty for article (a minor politican raising an unimportant question, of minimal relevance to this article) so I think it should be removed:
On 29 September, 2007, Italian politician Franco Grillini raised a parliamentary question with the Minister of Cultural Resources and Activities about the necessity of freedom of panorama. He said that the lack of such freedom forced Wikipedia, "the seventh most consulted website" to forbid all images of modern Italian buildings and art, and claimed this was hugely damaging to tourist revenues.
Thanks.--82.148.54.193 20:59, 11 October 2007 (UTC)

I disagree about the importance of this event. To have Wikipedia mentioned on the floor of the Italian parliament is surely interesting to anyone concerned about Wikipedia's notability. I could not locate the reference provided, to 'Italy Global Nation', a site where 'Wikipedia' was not found, so I replaced it with a citation to the same parliamentary speech at Franco Grillini's web site. EdJohnston 01:07, 12 October 2007 (UTC)

In the future use {{editprotected}}. ffm 16:23, 12 October 2007 (UTC)

wikipedia globe

Is it just me, or did the wikipedia globe (right above teh search bar) change? 76.109.11.127 02:23, 12 October 2007 (UTC)chewka

Not within the last few years. See Wikipedia:Wikipedia logos. ffm 16:21, 12 October 2007 (UTC)

British and american wikipedia?

Is it just me or exist two version of the english wikip edia? Exist it an american wikipedia. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Lordbecket (talk • contribs) 13:43, 12 October 2007 (UTC)

There are two English-language Wikipedias, but they're not an American English version and a British English version. There's the "regular" English Wikipedia (which accepts both British and American usage, as long as an article is internally consistent), and there's the Simple English Wikipedia, designed for readers with a limited vocabulary. —Angr 15:53, 12 October 2007 (UTC)

So what're the rules for the various spellings?

Dsmccohen 09:26, 16 October 2007 (UTC)

See WP:ENGVAR and WP:SPELLING. —Angr 18:46, 16 October 2007 (UTC)

Is Wikipedia primarily run by editors with liberal views?

I am finding that majority of articles ( for ex MoveOn.org articles, Al Gore article ) have a clear liberal slant - yet, I could not find a single page with a conservative slant.

Which leads me to wonder if Wikipedia is primarily a medium for expressing liberal views? - Not that there is anything wrong with it ;) TwakTwik 02:36, 15 October 2007 (UTC)

A fun project to do would be to use WikiScanner to location map the IP addresses of all changes and then do a cross look up of blue and red states. TwakTwik 02:52, 15 October 2007 (UTC)

There are a lot of editors who are not from the United States. I would guess more than half of them. A.Z. 02:55, 15 October 2007 (UTC)

Interesting that you should note some articles having a slant one way or the other; Wikipedia has a strict neutral point of view policy. I'll go check out the ones that you mentioned. Were there any others that you saw having a particular slant one way or another? GlassCobra 02:56, 15 October 2007 (UTC)

Another example would be Bill Clinton's page, specifically around impeachment section TwakTwik 17:50, 19 October 2007 (UTC)

It's not liberal, or conservative. It's democratic.. which means mob rule. No matter how blind and idiotic the majority is, the majority determines what stays on the page. So Wikipedia is a good research tool for tools of all kinds, be they left fascists or right fascists. I mean, the Nazi's had lots of peers to review the validity of their eugenics literature. Real bona fide scientific consensus going on in 1930's Germany.59.167.86.232 17:09, 30 October 2007 (UTC)

Yes, its predominantly democratic :) TwakTwik 03:30, 1 November 2007 (UTC)

Grammar Problem

There's an incidence of the word "a" before a vowel (the word "internet") in the final sentence of the fourth paragraph. I'd fix it, but the article is locked, and I'm a wikinoob, alas. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 68.103.48.35 (talk) 05:37, 15 October 2007 (UTC)

Corrected; thanks for pointing it out! —Angr 05:42, 15 October 2007 (UTC)

Vanity

This is just vanity and self-worship. It's even classed as a "good article" —Preceding unsigned comment added by 121.219.13.209 (talk) 07:32, 15 October 2007 (UTC)

Barely worth replying to - see by comments #article about wikipedia on wikipedia?????. If you have problems with the GA status, seek a review. Richard001 08:42, 27 October 2007 (UTC)

Legal issue of Wikipedia

Is Wikipedia under the USA law since the Wikimedia (and main server) locates in the USA? Thanks. --Manop - TH 05:42, 16 October 2007 (UTC)

yes – Gurch 15:48, 17 October 2007 (UTC)

Repetition?

The word "over" is repeated twice in only two sentences, one succeeding the other.

As of September 2007, Wikipedia had approximately 8.29 million articles in 253 languages, comprising a combined total of over 1.41 billion words for all Wikipedias. The English Wikipedia edition passed the 2,000,000 article mark on September 9, 2007, and as of October 14, 2007 it had over 2,047,000 articles consisting of over 890,000,000 words.

Randomblue 22:07, 16 October 2007 (UTC)

Since English Wikipedia != Wikipedia, this sounds okay to me. -- Taku 23:09, 24 October 2007 (UTC)

I think the point was stylistic rather than factual. Perhaps the second "over" could be changed to "more than" to provide a little lexical variation. —Angr 05:17, 25 October 2007 (UTC)

History/founding

There used to be a section named "history" on this article but it has been vandalized by TheMarioManiac on May 14th, 2007 and it was badly reverted (deletion actually, but the person probably didn't know it was a real section before being vandalized). Then a new similar section ("Founding") has been written on July 6th, 2007. I think this section "history" is really worthy, so can anybody merge it with the new section "founding"? 16@r 22:50, 16 October 2007 (UTC)

If someone reverts badly use the template Un-reverting (unless they are experienced editors, in which case you shouldn't template them (if you do you're likely to get warned yourself ;) Richard001 08:42, 27 October 2007 (UTC)

you are great

great site —Preceding unsigned comment added by 72.21.117.152 (talk) 15:13, 19 October 2007 (UTC)

We try. :) GlassCobra 17:56, 19 October 2007 (UTC)

But we have succeeded so far, haven't we? -- Taku 23:06, 24 October 2007 (UTC)

Yet from Google's POV if u searched "fuckedpedia", u'll be asked on top of the results "Did you mean Wikipedia". Trypanopediac 14:51, 28 October 2007 (UTC)

It even works with "fuckeduppedia! OMG!--Press208 02:28, 5 November 2007 (UTC)

Request: Number of UNIQUE words

The article presents the number of wikipedia's words. Is it possible to inform us and the number of its UNIQUE words? -- Kaseluris, Nikos 06:57, 20 October 2007 (UTC)

Definitely not in this article. It would be about as relevant as listing how many 10+ letter words there were. Richard001 20:41, 26 October 2007 (UTC)

Unlock

Could someone please unlock this page? I would like to add some sarcastic criticism of Wikipedia along with some off-colour sexual humour. Thank you. --24.235.231.206 22:55, 20 October 2007 (UTC)

I'm sure there's room on Uncyclopedia for that. —Angr 00:04, 21 October 2007 (UTC)

Grrr!

Wasn't there a separate article on Wikipedians - saying some welcome new members, others do this or that, etc. Now I can't find it! Expected to see on the See also but not there. Any ideas what the article title is I'm looking for? DionysosProteus 16:46, 22 October 2007 (UTC)

As far as I can tell from looking at the history, there's never been an article on Wikipedians. Wikipedians has always been either a redirect here or to Wikipedia:Wikipedians, which is outside article space. —Angr 17:23, 22 October 2007 (UTC)

It was the latter I was looking for. Any reason that's not on the see also list? DionysosProteus 23:55, 22 October 2007 (UTC)

Because it's in Wikipedia: namespace, not article space. It's a page intended for editors, not for readers. —Angr 04:14, 23 October 2007 (UTC)

Have added a dab, though is it worth it? Richard001 08:42, 27 October 2007 (UTC)

Newsmax?

Though it might be true indeed that Wikipedia has been infiltrated by left-wing vandals, the citing of Newsmax as a source is just sloppy. Newsmax is known to be reactionary and sensational. I read the article referred to and most of it reads like an editorial, as the article does a poor job indeed of making the case that liberals control the Wikipedia domain. I removed citation 69 as well as the sentence preceding it.

For your enjoyment, the final sentence of the article, "Most people accept information that is at their fingertips and don't take the time to check original sources. Thus the information superhighway offers everyone access to the same often inaccurate and biased information."

Asaspades9 00:59, 23 October 2007 (UTC)

Safety of Information

What would happen if the hard drives holding part of wikipedia crashed and failed or some natural cause such as a hurricane, tornado, earthquake, or fire destroyed the serevers holding the information on wikipedia? Or someone purposely physically vandalized the hard drives storing Wikipedia? Do they back up all the information as it is added in another place so if one server failed not all of the information would be lost?--71.234.111.157 19:34, 24 October 2007 (UTC)

Well, there is a warning that "much of the following is out of date as configurations change quickly and frequently:"

http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_servers#Overall_system_architecture

But it says, "The system is designed to failover to backup configurations at both the squid and Apache levels, and backup database support is in place, but not in an automatic failover."

The link below that to "Details on database replication in MySQL" doesn't say anything specific to how frequently Wikimedia replicates and distributes its master database, but I would presume that its contents could survive all sorts of disasters, natural and man-made. First draft of history 19:51, 24 October 2007 (UTC)

Bias

Looking through the article about wikipedia I think there are some neutrality issues particularly regarding the section about reliability and bias. It seems as though it has under represented the argument that these topics are valid and over represented the infalliability of wikipedia. It also is troubling that in outlining the argument the definitions used are ones that users in the wikipedia community created (hyperlinked)Matt1741 15:08, 26 October 2007 (UTC) rather than allowing for an actual argument to take place in which definitions could be agreed upon by both sides.

This may be an article that ought to be reviewed.

Love the rest of the site. Matt1741 10.25.07 —Preceding unsigned comment added by Matt1741 (talk • contribs) 22:06, 25 October 2007 (UTC)

Actually, there is an article on criticism about wikipedia. Wikipedia is practically anti-advertising itself.AbsoluteZero255 00:29, 26 October 2007 (UTC)

There may be some structural problems though in the way that Wikipedia is using all the methods that are suspect to describe the suspect problems.Matt1741 15:08, 26 October 2007 (UTC)

Spelling Checks

I am curious to know why Wikipedia still has no "did you mean ____?" links when I search for something and accidently spell it wrong. Why is this? Has it not yet been suggested that Wikipedia include such a tool? Heretic 02:24, 26 October 2007 (UTC)

We have Wikipedia:Redirect and Wikipedia:Disambiguation, though if you mean the sort Google search has, then no. It could probably be an improvement; the whole search function here could learn a lot from Google too, though you can search Wikipedia with Google if you want. This isn't really the place for such suggestions though, you'd best take it to the village pump or somewhere like that. Richard001 06:59, 27 October 2007 (UTC)

Templates

I don't like the way the three separate Wikipedia related templates still exclude some of the major articles - reliability, criticism and in culture are all left out. Is there any way we could fit them in somewhere, or rearrange the templates somehow to do so? We could even merge the lot into one super template, perhaps 'Wikipedia and related projects' or 'Wikipedia and the Wikimedia Foundation'. The problem there is that all the unrelated stuff is included if you just want something like the small Wikimedia projects version on e.g. Wikiquote. I don't know of any way to use only part of a template if desired, though it might be possible... Richard001 06:59, 27 October 2007 (UTC)

Wikipedia community

Take your pick: Wikipedia community or Wikipedia Community. To which should they redirect? Richard001 06:59, 27 October 2007 (UTC)

Images

We need an image of Jimbo here - the article is incomplete without it. Take your pick. Any suggestions? We used to have Image:Jimbo-wales---fosdem-2005.jpg IIRC, which I suggested be cropped, though that may have been another article. How about Image:Jimmy-wales-frankfurt2005-alih01.jpg or Image:Jimbo_Wales_in_France_cropped.jpg? There are two others like the former as well. Richard001 07:12, 27 October 2007 (UTC)

I'm going to be meek and add one to the history section. Richard001 05:10, 28 October 2007 (UTC)

Article is in breach of basic Wikipedia rules

Rules say that a person or an entity should refrain from writing an article about oneself and leave this task for someone else to ensure objectivity and neutrality, so how could the wikipedia community describe their project by themselves, they should leave that for other encyclopedias like Britannica or whatever rather than this utter selfishness.

Tyranopediac 18:33, 27 October 2007 (UTC)

None of us gets paid, so there's no conflict of interest. Anyway, this has been brought up hundreds of times before, and everyone agrees we're capable of writing neutrally about Wikipedia. —Angr 19:28, 27 October 2007 (UTC)

Does that mean a non-profit organization's article could be contributed to by people who run the organization in question?! Is the elimination of financial motives of inobjectivity enough for ensuring neutrality?! If so, then hopefully Wikipedia will stick to one standard when other non-profit entities contribute about themselves. Tyranopediac 21:07, 27 October 2007 (UTC)

It's only a problem when the article in question suffers from a lack of neutrality. If you think that this article is not neutral, please indicate the parts that need attention. Sijo Ripa 21:10, 27 October 2007 (UTC)

An imbalanced coverage of a topic deosn't necessarily need to come in the form of presenting one or more point by biased POV(s). It could also be by overlooking or censoring a valid criticism. For example in the process of building an article from scratch by multiple editors on Wikipedia, there is a tendency to build an incoherent text because of bits of info being added separately by different editors. If I go now to the article page (of this topic: Wikipedia) and write such criticism as a characteristic of wiki-built articles, my comment would be quickly removed by the INFLUENTIAL people here. Tyranopediac 13:26, 28 October 2007 (UTC)

Non-profit organizations often--even usually--have paid workers. That includes the Wikimedia Foundation. But Wikipedia's editors are not paid employees of the Wikimedia Foundation. —Angr 21:42, 27 October 2007 (UTC)

Wikipedia editors are naturally enthusiastic about their project so their views on it are automatically biased. Tyranopediac 10:29, 28 October 2007 (UTC)

See my response above: In short, not having an article on ourself would be a self reference and Britannica has an article on their 15th edition. Please have a skim through the talk page before you ask - this question has been raised twice above. Richard001 05:01, 28 October 2007 (UTC)

Should this article have an FAQ?

I don't watch this article, but I've seen the question above raised three times on this talk page alone, and we have 16 archives. Are there any others besides this that get frequently asked? I note that a lot of busy pages are using FAQs, such as evolution, intelligent design etc. Perhaps this is something we could consider. Richard001 05:01, 28 October 2007 (UTC)

Number of editors

Sorry for all these discussions, but I feel we need better information on the number of Wikipedians too. Often quoted is the number of editors, but this statistic is vague and sure to be misleading. I'd like to know how many active contributors we have, and more statistics on this in general. Does anyone know if/where such information could be found? It would also be possible to ascertain a reasonable estimate based on a sampling of existing users accounts, looking at what fraction are currently active. Richard001 09:12, 28 October 2007 (UTC)

What I find annoying is people creating accounts and making between 0-2 edits usually on one day. Rick-Levitt^Contribs 12:52, 6 November 2007 (UTC)

Reliability daughter

Just reading reliability of Wikipedia at the moment and I think 'quality of Wikipedia' might be a slightly better reflection of its scope. Comments welcome at Talk:Reliability of Wikipedia#Article name. Richard001 10:25, 28 October 2007 (UTC)

Hey Richard, are you the official spokesman for Wikipedia or something? I mean you are commenting on every single issue brought up here! Tyranopediac 10:40, 28 October 2007 (UTC)

Self Obsess Much?

Seriously, I think that Wikipedia has a few of it's facts wrong! By the way- did Google write an article about how good it was?

No! —Preceding unsigned comment added by 58.108.240.47 (talk) 06:33, 30 October 2007 (UTC)

Is Google an Encyclopedia? No. Does this article talk about how good Wikipedia is? No. —Angr 06:40, 30 October 2007 (UTC)

In a way it does, it implies self-notability and self-importance. The truth is Wikipedia is important but it shouldn't "say" that about itself. Other sites present themselves to the public through an "About" page, and if it is necessary to praise themselves they quote what newspapers, books ... etc written by others say about them. Tyranopediac 15:29, 30 October 2007 (UTC)

This article fully complies with our neutral point of view policy. It includes both positive and negative opinions that other, independent sources have written. Wikipedia is a notable topic, beyond a doubt, as it's one of the most highly-trafficked websites in the world. GlassCobra 16:10, 30 October 2007 (UTC)

Wikipedia is magnificent ©™® I mean I would rather wake up tomorrow and there would be no sun than there would be no Wikipedia.. The Earth revolves around Wikipedia not around the sun anymore!!! And it's absolutely necessary that Wikipedia reminds everybody of this fact by such an article, an "About" page is just not enough. Tyranopediac 20:16, 30 October 2007 (UTC)

Alexa

For the first time, Alexa stats now ranks WP as the 8th most visited website. --Camptown 09:35, 30 October 2007 (UTC)

Yeah, good that you mentioned Alexa.com, they don't give a rank to themselves although their job is to rank websites. Wikedpedia should follow their example. The appropriate place for any description that Wikipedia would like to give of itself to the readers is on a sort of "About" page(s) like all other sites do, not on an encyclopedic article. The same as if you are a famous person, you should not write the article about yourself on Wikipedia but it is quite normal that you write your user page because that's your "About" page. Tyranopediac 15:15, 30 October 2007 (UTC)

That might be feasible if Wikipedia weren't mirrored on other sites under different names. But it is. Why shouldn't about.com have an article on Wikipedia? —Angr 20:22, 30 October 2007 (UTC)

In case you really didn't understand, here is a clarification: I wasn't talking about "about.com", I meant an "About-This-Site" page that Wikipedia should use for introducing itself to the public instead of having an encyclopedic article glorifying itself. Also, I don't see at all, how could the mirror sites prevent Wikipedia from making this change (from article to about page)?!¿ Tyranopediac 10:52, 31 October 2007 (UTC)

It's not going to happen. As has already been pointed out to you, this discussion has been had many times before, and the outcome has always been the same. And, at any rate, an article talk page is not the place to suggest deletion.

This article is not going away. If you think that there are specific problems with how Wikipedia is presented here, please feel free to bring them up here. But the general griping is not productive. -- Vary | Talk 13:41, 31 October 2007 (UTC)

I suggested what I believe is absolutely needed to be done, whether it will be done or not that's up to Wikipedia and its influential people as I said above. In the very least, when someone ask for adding a valid point of criticism to the article, that should be possible, if there is any degree of editorial democracy here (direct editing is not possible for this article in the moment). One of the most serious points of criticism is that original contributions published for the first time on Wikipedia are being stolen by other sites that copyright 100% of what they steal, and when Wikipedia is informed about the infringements, responsibles here just don't care about it. Some cynical people may go as far as that Wikedpedia is complicit in this piracy of the production of its own contributors. You are invited to contribute (text, images, software ... whatever), then you learn that someone is claiming your contribution as his, you ask Wikipedia to do something and at best they'll tell you: We really can't, the pirates (or mirror sites in Wikipedia's euphemism) are out of control. Tyranopediac 16:20, 31 October 2007 (UTC)

The article is only semi-protected. Last I heard, new users are auto confirmed four days after their accounts are created, so if you can't edit it now you should be able to very soon. In the meantime, if there is any properly referenced material you think should be in the article, you can present it here. Protection of articles that are frequently vandalized is an unfortunate necessity. -- Vary | Talk 16:53, 31 October 2007 (UTC)

Mirror sites are allowed, per our licensing policy (the GFDL). Some are infringing our copyright, but the vast majority has the right to copy us :). In case you wondered, there is a Wikipedia:About page, introducing Wikipedia for our readers. It makes sense to have an article about Wikipedia so the readers of answers.com can learn about us. I hope that helps :) -- lucasbfr ^talk 16:58, 31 October 2007 (UTC)

Copyleft or GFDL is fine (like what answers.com does) but to copy from copyleft source like Wikipedia then publish the final work as copyright which is what I was reporting, that is infringement and Wikipedia just turn a blind eye to it. You want a specific example: http://news.softpedia.com/news/Pixelated-reality-43755.shtml Content copied from various digital photography articles in Wikipedia and at the bottom of all Softpedia pages you will find: "Softpedia. All rights reserved" + a link to their "Copyright Information" page: http://www.softpedia.com/user/copyright_information.shtml Tyranopediac 18:55, 31 October 2007 (UTC)

How do I edit a page on Wikipedia?

How does one edit a page on Wikipedia? I know it must be simple, but I simply can't get my arms around it.--Eventadmitbud 03:41, 1 November 2007 (UTC)

The same was you edited this talk page: click the 'edit' tab at the top. Check out Wikipedia:How to edit a page for more specifics. You may be having trouble because your account is very new; some articles (like Wikipedia) are semi-protected so that they can only be edited by established users. You may also want to look at Wikipedia:Questions to find out where to ask any other questions you have: this talk page is really for discussing the Wikipedia article, not Wikipedia itself. At any rate, welcome! -- Vary | Talk 03:47, 1 November 2007 (UTC)

I'm afraid I'm not following.--Eventadmitbud 03:51, 1 November 2007 (UTC)

If you can talk to us, you can edit wiki articles -- every page, including the talk pages, are edited in the same way. Gscshoyru 03:53, 1 November 2007 (UTC)

Aaah. So simple. I understand now.--Eventadmitbud 03:59, 1 November 2007 (UTC)

Irony

If Wikipedia wants everything to be free and GFDL, then why is its own logo not even GFDL? It seems very hypocritical. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Me Smiling Incorporated (talk • contribs) 11:21, 3 November 2007 (UTC)

The Wikipedia project requires the creation of a large body of open, free content. Sometimes, helping create the largest possible amount of open, free content requires the creation of small amounts of non-free content. The Wikipedia logo is one example, where copyright and trademark protection is being used to protect the Wikipedia brand. For another example of how strategic use of non-free content can be used to help the creation of free content, you might want to take a look at the copyright of the GFDL itself. -- Karada 11:28, 3 November 2007 (UTC)

Idiots Can Edit

There was a generally accepted policy page entitled WP:Idiots Can Edit but I can't find it anymore! Is there any change in this respect? Is Wikipedia no longer the free encyclopedia that everyone can edit? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 38.99.101.131 (talk) 15:12, 3 November 2007 (UTC)

A question

Why can't I edit this page? Chrissie

Because it's semi-protected so only registered users who have been here a few days can edit it. Helps keep the vandalism down to a dull roar. —Angr 18:25, 6 November 2007 (UTC)

Edit request

Could somebody please add an interwiki to zea:Wikipedia? Thanks :) --Ooswesthoesbes 17:55, 7 November 2007 (UTC)

Done :) -- Arwel (talk) 21:55, 7 November 2007 (UTC)

Globe Logo

Why is it that on the English Main Page, the Wikipedia Globe Logo features a backwards "Ñ" on one of the puzzle pieces, yet on the multi-lingual page that links to every Wikipedia, the И does not have a tilde? --Ye Olde Luke 00:53, 8 November 2007 (UTC)

I don't know, but what that letter is is the Cyrillic letter Й. —Angr 05:13, 8 November 2007 (UTC)

Picture of Larry Sanger

Larry Sanger, co-founder of Wikipedia

Hi. Why there is no Larry Sanger's picture in the article? He is a co-founder, he gave the name to the project, he gave the wiki idea. There is a Jimbo picture. Is this a NPOV? --NeutralPoint 19:45, 8 November 2007 (UTC)

I'll try to add it. Thanks, --Tom 19:49, 8 November 2007 (UTC)

For one thing there's little room as it is, and for another he has long left the project. It would be more accurate to call him a semi-cofounder, or something else in between what he and Jimbo each claim. Also, the picture has only been added very recently. Richard001 04:44, 9 November 2007 (UTC)

What are you suggesting? If we remove Sanger's picture, then we should definitely remove Wales. Neither picture helps in understanding the history of Wikipedia. Finally, whether someone is still at a project has absolutely nothing to do with whether they helped found it. That's what a co-founder is. It doesn't call him a co-manager or anything else.--Gnfgb2 05:49, 9 November 2007 (UTC)

Having a picture of Jimbo is one of the most basic things you would expect at this article. Jimbo is probably the first person anyone would think of associated with WP, so provided we illustrate the article, a picture of him is a good idea. I didn't realize we had one of Sanger; it must have been added very recently. Wales is clearly more important than Sanger, both in the founding of and especially current history of Wikipedia. Even if we should assume Sanger was just as important as Jimbo, whatever that is supposed to mean, he has long left the project. This article isn't called Co-founder(s) of Wikipedia, it's about Wikipedia in general, and hence Wales is obviously more relevant. Having said that, I was never a big fan of the ugly old logo, and the small pictures of Wales and Sanger in history works quite well. Richard001 08:04, 9 November 2007 (UTC)

Scandal'us

I did ctrl+F and find no mention of Essjay or Seigenthaler. Any controversy on wikipedia with its own article should be accessible from this page, don't you think? —Preceding unsigned comment added by ZayZayEM (talk • contribs) 23:33, 9 November 2007 (UTC)

background

What is that strange grey-y/blue liney object used as the background on every page? Why does the Arabic wikipedia have a different one? --86.135.216.24 01:01, 12 November 2007 (UTC)

See Arabic Wikipedia -- Taku 12:57, 12 November 2007 (UTC)

How can I see a picture of the background? --86.135.216.24 13:39, 12 November 2007 (UTC)

Prepare yourself to be surprised: Wikipedia background image. --63.246.162.72 16:39, 12 November 2007 (UTC)

Oh i see now... Now i want to know where it came from and who made it etc... anyone know what the book is? Encyclopedia Brittanica? :p --86.135.216.24 17:53, 12 November 2007 (UTC)

Y'know, I never noticed that was a book before. Gee, I've only been using Wikipedia for three years, too... —Angr 18:51, 12 November 2007 (UTC)

Oh, my god! It's a book! And I thought I am one of the long-time contributors. - Taku 22:56, 12 November 2007 (UTC)

en.vikipedia.org

Probably most alredy know, I just tiped en.vikipedia.org and browser opened some adult or something like that, site. w and v is quite the same;)

Semi-Protect talk page?

I've noticed that there has been many acts of vandalism upon this page, and most likely, this post will be vandalised sometime in the future. Is it possible to semi-protect this page, as this seems to be causing a bit of trouble. For example, as I was scanning the history of the page, I realized that reverting the article to its non-vandalised state would delete new editions to this article, forcing one to manually sort out vandalism. Anyways, I'm sure a non-registered person who has a great suggestion would be able to wait a few days of registering. Rfts (talk) 04:41, 20 January 2008 (UTC) NO VANDALISM!

Article in different languages

How does Wikipedia know for sure that two articles are about the same topic in different languages?--24.166.56.195 (talk) 22:23, 24 November 2007 (UTC)

In general, interlanguage links are added by people who can read both languages. For some topics, that's not even necessary: if I look at a Japanese biology article and see the Latin genus and species name is the same as in an English article, I can safely assume the two articles are about the same critter. Sometimes bots add the links too, on the principle that if A = B and B = C, then A = C. —Angr 21:04, 25 November 2007 (UTC)

Random ""?

Before I assume that this is the very vandalism it seems to be referring to (i.e. "random letters"), will someone tell me if there is such thing as a pletter? I will remove it soon. Cuindless (talk) 20:37, 26 November 2007 (UTC)

I guess you are right ;) -- lucasbfr ^talk 16:40, 28 January 2008 (UTC)

SUGGESTION (UNRELATED)

Have the web server automatically change the following static text in this article every 5 minutes:
"As of December 2007, Wikipedia had approximately 9 ¼ million articles in 253 languages"
"As of <=TODAY()>, Wikipedia haS approximately <=TOTALNUMBEROFARTICLES()> articles in 253 languages...."
What do you think about this? Please comment to me on my Talk: page and thanks kindly.
--Vid2vid (talk) 21:06, 18 January 2008 (UTC)

I'm not sure using the parser's magic words is a very good idea, it might have some unintended consequences for the mirrors for example (say I import this article on my personal wiki, it would output "15 articles"). -- lucasbfr ^talk 16:40, 28 January 2008 (UTC)

world record!

Wikipedia (IPA: /ˌwɪkɨˈpiːdiə/, /ˌwiːkiˈpiːdiə/, /ˌwɪkiˈpiːdiə/ or /ˌwiːkiˈpeɪdiə/) (Audio (U.S.) (help·info)) is a free,[4] multilingual, open content encyclopedia project operated by the non-profit Wikimedia Foundation. Its name is a portmanteau of the words wiki (a type of collaborative website) and encyclopedia. Launched in 2001 by Jimmy Wales and Larry Sanger, it is the largest, fastest growing and most popular general reference work currently available on the Internet.[5][6]

As of December 2007, Wikipedia had approximately 9 ¼ million articles in 253 languages, comprising a combined total of over 1.74 billion words for all Wikipedias. The English Wikipedia edition passed the 2,000,000 article mark on September 9, 2007, and as of January 30, 2008 it had over 2,200,000 articles consisting of over 957,000,000 words.[2] Wikipedia's articles have been written collaboratively by volunteers around the world, and the vast majority of its articles can be edited by anyone with access to the Internet. Having steadily risen in popularity since its inception,[1] it currently ranks among the top ten most-visited websites worldwide.[7]

Critics have questioned Wikipedia's reliability and accuracy, citing its open nature.[8] The criticism is centered on its susceptibility to vandalism, such as the insertion of profanities or random letters into articles, and the addition of spurious or unverified information;[9] uneven quality, systemic bias and inconsistencies;[10] and for favoring consensus over credentials in its editorial process.[11] Scholarly work suggests that vandalism is generally short-lived.[12][13]

In addition to being an encyclopedic reference, Wikipedia has received major media attention as an online source of breaking news as it is constantly updated.[14][15] When Time Magazine recognized "You" as their Person of the Year 2006, praising the accelerating success of on-line collaboration and interaction by millions of users around the world, Wikipedia was the first particular "Web 2.0" service mentioned, followed by YouTube and MySpace.[16 —Preceding unsigned comment added by 68.164.1.27 (talk) 19:25, 2 February 2008 (UTC)

Hi. Wikipedia is listed in the 2008 Guiness Book of World Records as the world's largest encyclopedia. Should this record be mentioned one of the Wikipedia-related articles? Can the book be used as the reference or is the record too obvious? Thanks. ~AH1^(TCU) 23:08, 29 November 2007 (UTC)

Is the Guinness Book of World Records even a reliable source? I didn't think so. —Angr ^{If you've written a quality article...} 23:16, 29 November 2007 (UTC)

Hi. Well, even if GWR isn't reliable, wouldn't Wikipedia's record as the largest encyclopedia already be quite obvious? Thanks. ~AH1^(TCU) 00:31, 30 November 2007 (UTC)

Hi. Nevermind, I guess I forgot to look at the article before I posted this comment. When I checked, It was already there. It says we beat even the one that remained the largest encyclopedia for 600 years, great work everybody! Thanks. ~AH1^(TCU) 22:52, 30 November 2007 (UTC)

How much bookshelf space would a printed version of Wikipedia take up? I calculated it at 72 miles (figuring all the books in one shelf). Here's how I did it:

As of November 30, 2007, this page reported Wikipedia contained 916,000,000 words. I figured only 5 characters per word (but actually believe it could be higher). A standard 8.5" x 11" page contains 2,000 characters per side, or 4,000 characters for each sheet of paper, resulting in 1,145,000 sheets of paper. I measured and found 1,000 pages of 20# paper takes up at least 4 inches, or 4,580,000 inches. There are 63,360 inches in a mile. That's 72.285 miles. It would actually be longer since I didn't figure width of each book's front and back covers.

I am open to other assumptions (the number of characters including spaces per word, for example).

And all accessible via a computer and the Web or in the palm of your hand by using the new Kindle electronic book. Ed 16:42, 30 November 2007 (UTC)

1,145,000 sheets of paper. Each book is 1,000 pages, so divide the sheets by 1,000. That makes 1,145 books four inches at the spine. Four times 1,145 is 4,580. 4,580 inches / 63,360 = ~0.0722 miles, or 381.216 feet (116 m). --Henry W. Schmitt 21:16, 30 November 2007 (UTC)

Rather than going first up to miles and then back down to feet, 4580 inches / 12 = 381.666667 ft (381'8", or 116.33 m). Certainly more shelf space than I have in my study! However, if Wikipedia were to be published as a series of books, it probably would be on much thinner paper than that, as most big encyclopedias and bibles are. 1000 sheets of paper like the kind my King James Bible is printed on is only about 2 inches thick; 1,145,000 sheets would then be 3000 inches (200'10"; 58.17 m) thick. Add in another eighth of an inch for covers on each 2000-page (1000-sheet) volume, though, and that adds another 143 inches (11'11"; 3.63 m). So in total, we're looking at over 200 ft of encyclopedia. Not 72 miles yet, but still impressive. —Angr ^{If you've written a quality article...} 08:33, 1 December 2007 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Size of Wikipedia might interest you. -- Taku 09:08, 1 December 2007 (UTC)

And especially Wikipedia:Size in volumes, which I had never seen before. —Angr ^{If you've written a quality article...} 09:05, 2 December 2007 (UTC)

"689.1 volumes of the Encyclopædia Britannica." Good god. -- Taku 09:19, 3 December 2007 (UTC)

But that 200 feet contains a lot of poor quality stuff. I prefer having an editorial filter. Life is too short... —Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.63.126.219 (talk) 02:52, 2 December 2007 (UTC)

You're right. I'd like to see how long the featured articles are. Real encyclopedia don't have articles that are not at least the quality of Wikipedia's featured ones. Except real encyclopedias don't feature Pokemon and Reese's Pieces. I suppose bad articles are better than no articles, but Wikipedia is not going to trump books anytime soon. --Henry W. Schmitt 07:39, 3 December 2007 (UTC)

The Free Encyclopedia

i am thinking about how "From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia" would be translated into Mongolian in the Mongolian Wikipedia. What is the exact meaning of "the free"? Personally, I think it is free, because no one have to pay for what they read. Or is it free, because everyone can access freely? Please help me to determine the right meaning. Bilguun.alt 05:44, 4 December 2007 (UTC)

It's "free as in free speech", not "free as in free beer". Please read gratis vs. libre for more about this important distinction. —Angr ^{If you've written a quality article...} 19:38, 4 December 2007 (UTC)

Why do both not apply? I see it as a play on words. the_undertow ^talk 19:42, 4 December 2007 (UTC)

Both don't apply because not all forms of Wikipedia will necessarily be free as in free beer. The much discussed CD-ROM version, if it ever actually appears, will almost certainly be sold for a price. —Angr ^{If you've written a quality article...} 19:48, 4 December 2007 (UTC)

That is purely speculative. In addition, that would imply that the content on the CD-ROM could not be found on the website. As far as users are concerned, Wikipedia is free to edit and free to use: speech and beer. the_undertow ^talk 19:51, 4 December 2007 (UTC)

Actually, it isn't. —Angr ^{If you've written a quality article...} 20:14, 4 December 2007 (UTC)

Proposal to add Secret mailing list scandal to controversies section

It has been revealed that the editors of Wikipedia use a secret mailing list to ensure that the content on Wikipedia remains inline with their liking. Source: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/12/04/wikipedia_secret_mailing/

(ps: Would love to see the discussion happening on the secret mailing list about this proposal :) )

TwakTwik 17:43, 4 December 2007 (UTC)

If you have read about this then you will know that even mentioning this could get you banned, your comment removed (even from the history) and a speech about how you were an "insider" tring to undo Wikipedia from the inside and that you comment was trolling and that all of your comments ever written were.

(ps: who will when Wikipedia's "inner circle" or Wikipedia as a community. At this point it will NEVER be both.) --71.170.1.101 (talk) 23:01, 4 December 2007 (UTC)

Sure, there are few bad apples among Wikipedia senior editors, but its not all bad. We can't throw the baby out with the bathwater. Unless new editors step up their game and start exercising the openness aspect of Wikipedia, some of the old farts with interests will continue to run their secret mailing lists. So, my advice to you is to take an active interest and press for fair and balanced articles. TwakTwik (talk) 05:58, 6 December 2007 (UTC)

Seriously, this affair looks more and more to me as a giant storm in a teacup... If we added every article The Register writes about every company/organization, some articles would be hundreds of pages long. See first if anyone is still talking about this incident in a few months, I might be wrong... -- lucasbfr ^talk 09:15, 6 December 2007 (UTC)

Speaking of The Register can we add the naked short sell shares controversy? 202.58.54.187 (talk) 03:34, 7 December 2007 (UTC)

Two points: 1. This exposed a secret mailing list - people should know that the fairness of Wikipedia is questioned. Its not a storm in a tea cup, its a fundamental question about Wikipedia's openness. If we try to hide it away from general public, it just furthers the suspicion of the secret mailing list. Ofcourse, the people who belong to the secret mailing list would like to claim its just a storm in a teacup. We need to note this point and make it permanent in history. 2. I am testing the power of secret mailing list - and would like to see how long this mod will stay in the article, before the powerful editors take it away. TwakTwik (talk) 04:29, 7 December 2007 (UTC)

I removed this for several reasons. It an extremely minor issue coming from one source which is often not considered a reliable source. If and when other reliable sources pick it up you're welcome to re-add it but until then it should stay out. As someone else mentioned, there are many, many articles on the register about many different companies and organisations. Clearly most of them don't deserve a mention in the main article. This issue may belong in a sub article, I don't know. But considering the other stuff in the reliability and bias section which are noteable and widely reported studies, comments etc coming from noteable organisations and people, clearly discussing the issue of wikipedia's reliability and bias this is clearly out of place. BTW, I don't belong to this mailing list or to any group of powerful editors. I'm not even an admin and actually don't really make that many mainspace article edits. So your suggestion that this was going to be removed by said group was clearly false Nil Einne (talk) 21:03, 21 December 2007 (UTC)

Disagree with your removal. The existance of secret mailing list is not in dispute, and forming select groups within editors is not in dispute. Selectively choosing only positive notes about Wikipedia does a great disservice. While I don't doubt your claim that this is not initiated by the secret mailing list, I do think Wikipedia editors are selectively rejecting anything reported by register. Register is a reputed news source ( probably more reputed than Wikipedia itself). I am not going to remove your change, but you should restore the line about secret mailing list. TwakTwik (talk) 04:01, 3 January 2008 (UTC)

Wikipedia as the Ministry of Truth

After a discussion as to the impact of Wikipedia on the world and our everyday society. My co-workers and I came to the agreement that Wikipedia was perhaps the greatest innovation in information availability since the invention of the printing press. And as the printing press could be used to spread knowledge but it could also be used to spread propaganda and lies. As Wikipedia grows in volume of information and becomes more and more prevalent in our society as the best source for any information you could ever want or need it has the potential to become very similar to the "Ministry of Truth". Clearly we are a long way off from the "Ministry of Truth" described in George Orwell's book 1984, but potentially we have the power collective as a society to change any fact historical, literary or scientific..... Or if it was taken over by a government agency of coarse. :-P
With the power of Wikipedia I wouldn't be surprised if a world government sometime in the near future doesn't forge their own private Wikipedia (and block the real deal) and populate it with only the information they deem acceptable. And a true "Ministry of Truth" is born.

Thoughts?

--John hmstr (talk) 21:26, 4 December 2007 (UTC)

That's called "The Press" in some countries ;) -- lucasbfr ^talk 09:16, 6 December 2007 (UTC)

Almost anyone can edit Wikipedia. I highly doubt everyone with access to the World Wide Web would allow for Wikipedia to become some totalitarian enterprise.--Bricktoday (talk) 04:24, 14 December 2007 (UTC)

How Much Memory?

I saw in the article that they have hundreds of Linux computers running a dedicated server. I want to know how much memory is used to keep this site up. I know YouTube has quite a few terabytes. This surely must have quite a few. -KT- KT529 (talk) 19:25, 5 December 2007 (UTC)

I could not find the hardware specs, but the database is surprisingly small - maybe around 30 GB. It's hard to take up too much space with what is mostly text. Video, as on YouTube, is the worst. And for the space of one average MP3, you can have all the text in the King James Bible.--Stephan Schulz (talk) 10:22, 6 December 2007 (UTC)

Thanks. But, why only 30 Gb? They said they had many Linux computers in the US. 30 Gb is less than ONE good computers memory. Sorta doesn't make sense. —Preceding unsigned comment added by KT529 (talk • contribs) 13:32, 7 December 2007 (UTC)

It's not the size of the database, but the number of requests. Most of the pages are dynamically rendered, i.e. the page data is extracted from the database, it is rendered from Wiki markup into HTML (although that might be cached), the individual links are added ("my talk, my preferences,"...), the user preferences are applied, and the page is served out. Add to that all the special requests (history, comparison, diffs, inserts...). Wikipedia is not limited by disk space for the primary DB, but by processing power and network bandwidth. --Stephan Schulz (talk) 14:08, 7 December 2007 (UTC)

IPC merge

Sorry for being late with this:

Wikipedia in culture → Wikipedia#Cultural significance.

We don't need an edit for every "ooh, Sideshow Bob mentioned Wikipedia!" Such trivia is discouraged per WP:5P, but it is a fact that Wikipedia is a cultural phenomenom. We should, then, focus on connective trivia on how its made an impact with an example. Such is the case with "Inaccuracy: The Onion; Source of information: The Office; Meta-humour: xkcd", which is in the article. Will ^(talk) 13:30, 7 December 2007 (UTC)

Show Who Posted Article?

Do you think it would help the community if at the bottom of the articles it showed who posted them? Then we could more directly communicate any errors to be fixed (if they're an active user). -KT-

-killertank529- (talk) 13:35, 7 December 2007 (UTC)

See the history link. It gives access to all authors (there usually are many) and allows you to see each change. However, this being a Wiki, if you find an error, just fix it yourself. However, these question is somewhat misplaces here - this is the talk page for the Wikipedia article on Wikipedia, not a general chat board about Wikipedia. You might want to try the village pump (WP:VILLAGE]). --Stephan Schulz (talk) 14:18, 7 December 2007 (UTC)

Would like to add the following to reliability and bias section

I think the following disclaimer should be added:

Wikipedia uses multiple tiers of control for editors. Senior editors trusted by Jimmy Wales are given permission to protect articles from edits that they do not like. Wikipedia has an informal hierarchy of power that ensures that none of the content in Wikipedia will contradict with the views of the senior editors. TwakTwik (talk) 22:59, 8 December 2007 (UTC)

Something along this line is discusssed at the content and internal structure section. -- Taku (talk) 23:03, 8 December 2007 (UTC)

Your description, however, is almost entirely inaccurate; you are presumably thinking of:

1. administrators - the roughly one thousand users currently able to use a few extra tools, and respected by other users as trusted editors; some prefer the label "janitor", to stress that this should not be considered a position of editorial authority.
2. the protection policy - in specific sets of circumstances, to stop things descending into complete anarchy, pages are locked from editting; in almost all cases, this is temporary, until a particular debate or situation has been resolved (however much we like the idea of being free to edit, Wikipedia is not a social experiment, so lines do have to be drawn).

Wherever possible, neither of these factors are used to make editorial decisions, although Wikipedia certainly does have editorial policies - as agreed and implemented by the "normal" users like you and me. Come to think, there's probably an FAQ on all this somewhere. This discussion of the Wikipedia power structure might interest you. - IMSoP (talk) 23:36, 8 December 2007 (UTC)

The recent abuses by several of these senior editors with extra tools is a cause for concern, and this group tries to prevent the public from knowing about it. The best way to save Wikipedia is by improving the transparency, unfortunately transparency is what senior editors despise most. TwakTwik (talk) 00:03, 9 December 2007 (UTC)

Well, I haven't been that active recently, but in my experience there are always accusations of admins abusing their power, and of sinister cabals.

Generally speaking, experienced editors (whether or not they have the extra tools) have invested more of their time and effort in the project, and will be more familiar with the accumulated rules that are essential to keep something this big running; as a consequence, they're more likely to come down hard on those they see as acting inappropriately.

As for transparency, the irony is that it's exactly the ad hoc nature of the power structure that makes it so opaque to less experienced users - everything is "hidden in plain sight", as they say. If there were a formalised "representative government", a lot of things could be simplified - but then there really would be an opportunity for abuse of power... - IMSoP (talk) 00:29, 9 December 2007 (UTC)

Source concerns

I have re-added the primary sources tag to the Language editions section, after it was removed with the comment that it "looked ok". I disagree with this assertion: everything in the section is cited to primary sources. The only secondary source discusses the topic of the section (Language editions) only in a trivial manner, and is not sufficient. This is a problem throughout the whole of this article, but starting small seems like a good idea. User:Krator (t c) 13:21, 12 December 2007 (UTC)

But do we really need secondary sources for stats or lists, non-controversial facts? I also propose: If some particular statements need more citation, then it would be better to use {{fact}}. I said "looked ok" because it was unclear what a problem was. -- Taku (talk) 13:53, 12 December 2007 (UTC)

Globe Logo

Why is it that on the English Main Page, the Wikipedia Globe Logo features a backwards "Ñ" on one of the puzzle pieces, yet on the multi-lingual page that links to every Wikipedia, the И does not have a tilde? --Ye Olde Luke 00:53, 8 November 2007 (UTC)

I don't know, but what that letter is is the Cyrillic letter Й. —Angr 05:13, 8 November 2007 (UTC)

Yes, it's strange, I've never noticed this point. Some language editions use the same logo than the multilingual portal use (like {ar} or {sv}) and some others like {en}, {de}, {fr} don't... Maybe some answer elements or clues can be found on Meta-Wiki. 16@r (talk) 00:19, 14 December 2007 (UTC)

Why?

Why would wikipedia have an article on itself? —Preceding unsigned comment added by PwnersRule (talk • contribs) 13:56, 14 December 2007 (UTC)

Because it's a notable website that has received a lot of discussion in sources independent of itself. It would certainly be a strange omission for an encyclopedia not to have an article about it. (And after all, Britannica has an article about itself, so why shouldn't Wikipedia?) —Angr ^{If you've written a quality article...} 14:04, 14 December 2007 (UTC)

Thanks, Angr!--PwnersRule (talk) 20:41, 14 December 2007 (UTC)PwnersRule

I would like to point out that Britannica also has an article about Wikipedia. --130.15.161.188 (talk) 20:29, 17 December 2007 (UTC)

Does Britannica have an artice on britanica though? :P 87.194.30.174 (talk) 00:53, 17 January 2008 (UTC)

Sure it does. It has articles on several other encyclopaedias as well. --Aqwis (talk – contributions) 14:21, 17 January 2008 (UTC)

Thanks! --PwnersRule (talk) 19:43, 18 December 2007 (UTC)PwnersRule

The only reason they think it is a notable website is because they created it. Of course they are going to have a article on their website, they're conceited.05:24, 25 February 2008 (UTC)~Justin —Preceding unsigned comment added by 69.14.188.126 (talk)

screenreading technology?

80.165.181.235 (talk) 19:01, 17 December 2007 (UTC) I kind of disaggree with the artical that screenreading technology can't be used with wikipedia, if you know your screenreader then you'll do fine, at least I do and I'm fully blind. Of course it depends on which screenreader you use, but over all I'd say wikipedia is accessible. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 80.165.181.235 (talk) 18:58, 17 December 2007 (UTC)

Well, it only says Wikipedia is impractical for use with screen readers, not that it can't be used with them. And it's tagged as unsourced, so maybe it was just one person's guess or opinion. —Angr ^{If you've written a quality article...} 19:10, 17 December 2007 (UTC)

Licensing and user contributions.

A discussion about another wiki brought up an important issue. Unlike other text under the GFDL I don't download the whole thing before making modifications. Before Wikipedia one would copy a document, edit it on my computer, and then distribute the modified version.

I believe there should be some information about the mechanism that places contributions under the GFDL. Has anyone ever published a legal opinion that explains why having a little note at the bottom of the edit page places my contribution under the GFDL?

What allowed the content under the Bomis license to become GFDL? I'm assuming it was a donation. Did someone write a letter saying the following information is now under the GFDL?

--Gbleem (talk) 06:58, 19 December 2007 (UTC)

Dead Link

One of the references at the end pf the article points to a non-existent page. [1] It points to an article in The Washington Post, which is no longer there. Maybe there's some sort of archive we can point to? Not being familiar with that website, I took no action. --Ruijoel (talk) 14:17, 19 December 2007 (UTC)

URL

This article has an external link to wikipedia.com. Though I agree that it is important to document the original URL of wikipedia, I don't think this should be an external link. When the link is clicked it just sends me to wikipedia.org, and I am already there. If someone who is able to edit this page wouldn't mind, it would be great if that link was removed. RedSox2008 (talk) 00:49, 21 December 2007 (UTC)

This is an article about wikipedia. You may already be there, but other people may not. Wikipedia is licensed under the GFDL and other people are free to reuse our content. There ae also attempts to make wikipedia available on DVDs and CDs or even print for those without good access to the internet. You may want to read Wikipedia:Self-references to avoid. To put it simply, wikipedia should not be written from a wikipedia point of view. Nil Einne (talk) 21:06, 21 December 2007 (UTC)

Criticisms section

In the intrest of neutralism, I think there ought to be a criticisms section on this article. Llamadog903 (talk) 18:21, 28 December 2007 (UTC)

It appears to have been deleted in a fit of unnoticed vandalism in the past few days. I just restored it. —Angr ^{If you've written a quality article...} 19:22, 28 December 2007 (UTC)

The criticism should include the sites hasty move to delete articles. Reference: http://www.nationalpost.com/news/world/story.html?id=199409

What an absurdly one-sided story. If anything, it's become increasingly difficult to get crap articles on nonnotable topics deleted from Wikipedia over the last few years. —Angr ^{If you've written a quality article...} 09:29, 31 December 2007 (UTC)

Donations

Here's my mild criticism for the people a wikipedia. Though I truly enjoy the service I find the method used to solicit donations to be quite petty. Getting slammed at every page to please donate a person could find themselves under the impression that wikipedia is hurting for funds to run the website. Looking at their donations page however it is clearly not the case. I find it hard to imagine that a lot of staff is needed to run wikipedia as it is completely built by it's viewers. Staff are needed to police the articles (as I'm sure this one will be pulled) but I hardly see their being a shortage of funds for them looking at the volume of donations received by the website. Beyond that, new hardware and software as well as other expenses seem to all be more than covered looking at the donations page. So where's all the money going? I can make a guess but will keep that to myself. Anyway, having a donations page is a great idea. But do you really have to act like you are in such need of funds when you are receiving ridiculous amounts of money already? Is the wiki team sick of flying business and considering a private jet? Does the head office seem a little boring and making trump tours look more your style? Please. You want donations and you're getting them. Stop acting like your going broke because no one is buying it. If anything, seeing that banner at the top of every page makes me want to donate even less then before. It's just greedy. My advice is that you stop before someone does an expose on you guys and where their "donations" are going. Seems like something I may see on dateline someday. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 12.146.101.146 (talk • contribs) 28 December 2007

If you really want to know, they're moving much of their equipment and things to San Francisco, CA, and making a couple new board positions, and they also want to become a global outreach charity for the distribution of free knowledge (OLPC and all), and they still need to pay their electricity bill, so there! 68.101.123.219 (talk) 02:11, 30 December 2007 (UTC)

If you want to know what the money is planned to be spent on, see the image below:

What must be understood is that the Wikipedia database is very large. A database dump of just the top revisions of all the pages on Wikipedia, in an archive file is six gigabytes large. Multiply in all revisions, all wikipedias, your compression ratio, and you're talking terabytes upon terabytes, not to mention the backups. On top of that, they need memory, processing, bandwidth just to make Wikipedia run as smoothly as it does today. Will ^(talk) 02:23, 30 December 2007 (UTC)

License of that screenshot

The license of that screenshot bothers me. I thought this was a free encyclopedia. It really has to be changed or removed! --212.247.27.80 (talk) 13:59, 1 January 2008 (UTC)

logo

has the icon that appears before the adress in IE7 changed from a W to some multicoloured thing ^DAVID _CAT 16:00, 1 January 2008 (UTC)

article about Wikipedia?

There are lots of articles out there about our WP experiment. I am wondering what the consensus is for inclusion of any of these articles in an external links section here? For example, here is one, albeit, of a more controversial nature, but still interesting: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/12/04/wikipedia_secret_mailing/ Giovanni33 (talk) 09:34, 7 January 2008 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Press coverage is a good place for this kind of stuff. In this article, on the other hand, it is just not a practical to mention every single scandal involving Wikipedia. It's probably a good idea to expand on the power structure of wikipedia, though; like, how Wikipedia is a not democracy. The current article doesn't clearly describe the extent of the power Jimbo has over editorial decisions or such. The challenge is to achieve this in a non-self-referential concise manner. -- Taku (talk) 22:13, 17 January 2008 (UTC)

What Linux distribution runs Wikipedia?

I couldn't find any info about it. Where can I find it? Is it Debian and if so what version? Do all servers run on the same Linux distribution? Tommy (talk) 17:53, 17 January 2008 (UTC)

A mixture - mostly Fedora and Ubuntu. You can see more on Meta-Wiki. Will ^(talk) 19:29, 17 January 2008 (UTC)

Thanks! Tommy (talk) 17:26, 18 January 2008 (UTC)

Wikipedia in the media

Shouldn't this article link to Wikipedia:Wikipedia in the media and Wikipedia:Editing of Wikipedia by the media? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 69.253.64.213 (talk) 15:56, 21 January 2008 (UTC)

How to learn not to trust wikipedia.

this is why people should not trust wikipedia beacause a girl who is not in her 20s is writting this article. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 68.121.246.217 (talk) 00:50, 25 January 2008 (UTC)

== cuba == cabana

Sorry? The age of the authors has no relation to the reliability of the work. Please see Wikipedia:Replies to common objections#Trustworthiness. --Puchiko (Talk-email) 13:27, 27 January 2008 (UTC)

I think I would trust some teenage girl more than some cia agent. -- Taku (talk) 03:46, 2 February 2008 (UTC)

Headline text

What's the password to edit Wikipedia? —Preceding unsigned comment added by Lunchscale\Lobbykneew (talk • contribs) 08:16, 25 January 2008 (UTC)

No password is needed: you can edit most pages. This page is semi protected to prevent vandalism: you will be able to edit this page 4 days after you registered your account. --h2g2bob (talk) 13:35, 27 January 2008 (UTC)

The link for footnote number 68 is wrong.

The article is no longer in the "current_edition." The correct hyperlink is: http://www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/story.asp?sectioncode=26&storycode=209408 —Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.89.253.42 (talk) 23:49, 25 January 2008 (UTC)

Fixed. Note that any user can fix errors they see. PeterSymonds | talk 18:20, 26 January 2008 (UTC)

Not IPs, this page is semi protected :) --h2g2bob (talk) 13:36, 27 January 2008 (UTC)

Mention by the Supreme Court of India

Thankyou Nbeniwal for the details [2] of Wikipedia's mention by the Supreme Court of India. I don't think it warrants being in the introduction though, so I am moving it here for now:

The in Commr. of Customs, Bangalore vs. ACER India Pvt. Ltd (Citation: 2007(12)SCALE581) stated that: We have referred to wikipedia, as the learned Counsel for the parties relied thereupon. It is an online encyclopaedia and information can be entered therein by any person and as such it may not be authentic. It may be useful to note that observations of the Supreme Court are binding on all courts in India.

Once the citation is re-formatted as a footnote (is this available online?), I think this could be included briefly in the Criticism section. Open4D (talk) 12:25, 28 January 2008 (UTC)

From this text: [3]. I think the text about a specific case where they're using definitions from Wikipedia for non-controversial definitions? --h2g2bob (talk) 22:01, 30 January 2008 (UTC)

Italics

Shouldn't the word 'Wikipedia' be italicized? Wikipedia is an encyclopedia, an encyclopedia is a work, and names of works should be italicized (like titles of books, albums, magazines, films and tv series are.) — Jhn* 20:18, 1 February 2008 (UTC)

The intro of the article defines wikipedia to be an "encyclopedia building project" so I guess that's why the name wikipedia is not italicized. -- Taku (talk) 03:44, 2 February 2008 (UTC)

It depends what standars you are using, if you use the APA's strict standard for example, Wikipedia would only be italicised in certain conditions. I personaly think its not worth bothering with really.

­Julienrl (talk) 05:07, 11 February 2008 (UTC)

Founders listed twice

Founders are listed...then another paragraph lists them again, stating what each brought to the project. What each brought to project should be moved up, after first mention of founders, and the redundant paragraph deleted. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.142.2.27 (talk) 07:44, 3 February 2008 (UTC)

Wikipedia and School

Many schools don't like wikipedia because they think that the information is false. I wanted to see if that was true. So I edited (added) a sentence to Japan saying, "It is common knowledge that Japan is the largest country in the world." That edit was corrected within seconds. Should schools accept wikipedia as a reliable source of information? —Preceding unsigned comment added by Ivan G14 (talk • contribs) 23:53, 6 February 2008 (UTC)

For more information, take a look at: Wikipedia:Replies to common objections#Trustworthiness. In my personal opinion, Wikipedia is an excellent starting point but if you're writing a paper or essay, you should use more than one source. In fact, I don't think anyone should write his whole paper based on an encyclopaedia, regardless of which one.
And please, don't ever try to insert incorrect information into Wikipedia on purpose. It wastes the time of contributors who could be writing excellent articles. Puchiko (Talk-email) 15:27, 7 February 2008 (UTC)

Note: The following text was added into the middle of Ivan's post by User:86.163.172.151. To avoid making it seem like Ivan wrote this, I moved the information here. The inserted text read: Yes but... Wikipedia is edited by people without any knowledge other than that which they can confirrm [sic] though [sic] other internet searches. And, [sic] if you edit any living person's profile in a complimentary way (however flattering), it remains- but disagree with these compliments and you either need a citation or you're a vandal. Wikipedia is a lowbrow nerds' half accurate fact book designed by the poorly educated for the poorly educated. At least it keeps the editors/administratos [sic] /whatever they call themselves away from kiddie-fiddling for afew [sic] hours. (COME ON CENSOR ME IF YOU"RE GUILTY- 1st one to "revert" is the paedophile) (end of inserted text). Comment moved by Puchiko (Talk-email) 21:45, 9 February 2008 (UTC)

I think it will be wisest to respond to your comments one by one. Your original statement is bold, my answer follows in normal font:

• Yes but... Wikipedia is edited by people without any knowledge other than that which they can confirrm [sic] though [sic] other internet searches.
  Not really. Our articles cite books, newspapers, and scholarly journals as references. Our contributors include teachers at the University of California; computer science professors; NBC news journalists; professors of Genome Sciences and Biology at the University of Washington; social scientists; economists; professors of Astronomy at the University of Texas; Oxford professors; Nobel prize winners and other qualified professionals.
• And, [sic] if you edit any living person's profile in a complimentary way (however flattering), it remains- but disagree with these compliments and you either need a citation or you're a vandal.
  Negative information could get us sued, positive information isn't going to, so it's more overlooked. However, our policies clearly require all material about living persons to be cited.
• Wikipedia is a lowbrow nerds' half accurate fact book designed by the poorly educated for the poorly educated.
  See above for notable academic and professors who are also Wikipedians. You'll find many others at Wikipedia:Wikipedians with articles.
• At least it keeps the editors/administratos [sic] /whatever they call themselves away from kiddie-fiddling for afew [sic] hours.
  I think it's rather humorous to accuse Wikipedians of paedophilia considering that a huge number of contributors (including yours truly) are below 15. Puchiko (Talk-email) 16:15, 10 February 2008 (UTC)

In reply to "Then again, the fact that the Wikipedians have brought you into the fold even though you're 15 does support the opinion that they're paedophiles grooming adolescents." which was posted on my talk page.
I'm fourteen. One of German Wikipedia's administrators was thirteen when he was voted administrator. I've never experienced any child grooming on Wikipedia. I have, however, seen it on sites intended for children, such as Neopets or RuneScape. Puchiko (Talk-email) 20:14, 4 March 2008 (UTC)

Real and nominal $ values in articles

Hello, I will start with a bit of context, please bear with me. I was reading an article about hackers earlier today and they were talking about a 10 000$ fine,then I watched a movie about the civil war and tehy talk about 25$, 300$ and 1000$ and it got me thinking... how much is that worth?! Wouldin't it be possible to have pages show and automaticaly update a nominal value? For example, if someone got fined 1000 in 1977, it would be shown as

"1000 $(equivalent to 2000$ today)"

or if the fine was 1000$ in 2000 it would say:

"1000$ (equivalent to 1180$ today)"

and the multiplyer could be updated yearly but variable would keep the same name so that the algorithm would not have to be changed. The article would not be touched but would be automaticaly updated. This way we could have a table of multiplyers for different years\countries updated yearly or more if wanted and you just have to insert the line of code that applies to your contry (since inflation enormously varies from one country to an other).

Along the same lines, could we not have an automatic conversion to USD and\or €? (Being canadian I know that I would like to see it in CAD$ but hey, who am I kidding lol)

Julienrl (talk) 05:02, 11 February 2008 (UTC) Julien feb 11 2008

Software and hardware

Wikipedia currently runs on dedicated clusters of GNU/Linux servers, 300 in Florida, 26 in Amsterdam and 23 in Yahoo!'s Korean hosting facility in Soul.[48] Wikipedia employed a single server until 2004, when the server setup was expanded into a distributed multitier architecture. In January 2005, the project ran on 39 dedicated servers located in Florida. This configuration included a single master database server running MySQL, multiple slave database servers, 21 web servers running the Apache HTTP Server, and seven Squid cache servers.

220.133.92.72 (talk) 17:29, 16 February 2008 (UTC)

Fixed. Thanks! -- Vary | Talk 17:40, 16 February 2008 (UTC)

The error was due to me. It escaped the spell-checker. I still can't believe that I made that error. -- Taku (talk) 09:47, 21 February 2008 (UTC)

Wikipedia (terminology)

Since nearly all the terms related to Wikipedia (Wikimedia, MediaWiki, etc.) are easily confused by people finding out the "wikisphere", I was thinking of the idea of creating a new article titled Wikipedia (terminology) similar to British Isles (terminology) (British Isles (disambiguation) is a redirect) and Netherlands (terminology) (and Netherlands (disambiguation)). But I prefer to request for comments before creating it because it's useless to write something if it's deleted a few while after. So what do you think of it? 16@r (talk) 16:00, 17 February 2008 (UTC)

Sounds like a good idea. -- Taku (talk) 22:33, 18 February 2008 (UTC)

Wikipedia banned in UK Universities

Should there be mention of the fact that because it is so unreliable as a source of citation, WP is banned in most UK Universities? Does the same apply to other countries? Mike0001 (talk) 22:30, 18 February 2008 (UTC)

Not heard anything about it at Nottingham. But you should never cite wikipedia, you cite wikipedia's sources. -mattbuck (Talk) 22:32, 18 February 2008 (UTC)

This article mentions that Wikipedia has been criticised for its unreliability. I think the criticism is sufficient to ensure NPOV. And if you don't have a source for your claim, it's WP:OR. More information can be found at Wikipedia:Replies to common objections#Reliability. Puchiko (Talk-email) 15:07, 22 February 2008 (UTC)

I'm not sure how (or where) to write it, but rather than start talking about particular countries or particular universities where Wikipedia is not accepted, would it be simplest to point out (not simply in the criticism section) that Wikipedia is (and has never claimed to be, hence this not being criticism) a "primary source" for information, and that it follows from this that Wikipedia cannot be regarded as valid for academic citation.

Uncontroversial, informative, and if nothing else, reduces unwarranted criticism of unreliability.

Prof Wrong (talk) 15:21, 22 February 2008 (UTC)

Good God. I tried to put this in and got reverted twice for not having published sources. Not having published sources? For the fact that Wikipedia is an encyclopedia and not an academic journal? Are you lot having a laugh?

All I'm trying to do is make it clear that the fact that it can't be cited as a source doesn't mean it's in any way "wrong" or "bad"....

Prof Wrong (talk) 20:32, 22 February 2008 (UTC)

You were reverted because you were trying to claim that use of Wikipedia is banned at universities. You need to cite proper sources for a claim like that. Gwernol 20:41, 22 February 2008 (UTC)

If that was your only complaint, why not remove that claim alone and just change it to end "and doing so is discouraged", rather than revert the entire edit? Prof Wrong (talk) 10:45, 23 February 2008 (UTC)

For convenience of the others, I cite Prof Wrong's addition:

"As an encylopedia, Wikipedia is not (and has never claimed to be) a primary source of information. As such, it is unwise to cite Wikipedia in any academic or scholarly works, and doing so is not only discouraged by Wikipedia, but is also banned by a number of institutions."

There are several problems with it. The first sentence is a general fact; like a sky is blue. The article needs to contain information specific to Wikipedia. Maybe there are so many, too many, people who don't even know this general fact, but we are not here to preach them. This also applies to the first part of the second sentence. Finally, the last part of the second sentence is problematic because it's not specific enough. Like writing on a movie review, stating that many people didn't like the movie is not encyclopedic.

Having said this, I think this is an important point that the article hasn't adequately discusses. We all know, anecdotally, that many students (outside US) consult Wikipedia too and universities or professors have policies on the use. In short, the point is important, but the addition that made the point wasn't good. -- Taku (talk) 03:50, 23 February 2008 (UTC)

How is it "preaching" to give useful information to someone? Anyone reading the article clearly wants to know what Wikipedia is and isn't. The boundaries of a topic are always going to be relative. Someone wanting to know what Wikipedia is isn't likely to click on encyclopaedia to find out -- they'll expect everything on wikipedia. The sky article does mention that the sky is blue -- you don't have to go to another page to find out.

Prof Wrong (talk) 10:45, 23 February 2008 (UTC)

The first sentence is all right, I wouldn't have a problem with including it in the article. But then the problems start:

• As such, it is unwise to cite Wikipedia in any academic or scholarly works-"unwise" is POV
• and doing so is not only discouraged by Wikipedia-who's Wikipedia? A lot of articles and a lot of people with radically different opinions. I don't think you can get each and every Wikipedian with this claim.
  Yes, Jimbo discourages it, and I agree with him. But neither Jimbo nor me are Wikipedia.
• but is also banned by a number of institutions. Per WP:WEASEL, words like "some", "many" and "a number" should be replaced by a more specific claim, for example "Cambridge University's college of medicine bans the use of Wikipedia as a source in its students' papers."

So I have no objections to the first sentence being added but the rest shouldn't. Puchiko (Talk-email) 17:00, 5 March 2008 (UTC)

Administration

How long does it take from me becoming an editor (this week) to being able to be a full administrator on Wikipedia —Preceding unsigned comment added by Tangola (talk • contribs) 22:50, 22 February 2008 (UTC)

This discussion page is for discussing the article about Wikipedia, not the use of Wikipedia itself. Regardless, see Wikipedia:Guide to requests for adminship. You must put in a considerable amount of effort and work into Wikipedia to become an Administrator. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Scottydude (talk • contribs) 20:12, 23 February 2008 (UTC)

vandalism

any1 noticed sum tard has called us cock sucking deuch-bags on the description of the site thingy? —Preceding unsigned comment added by Wiki443556 (talk • contribs) 18:41, 27 February 2008 (UTC)

More vandalism

"As of December 2007 !!!!you guys are cock sucking douche bags.," -- vandalism to be removed -- How can this happen is the page is protected?? 216.194.0.237 (talk) 18:50, 27 February 2008 (UTC)

It was only a cache problem. I fixed it. 79.1.74.103 (talk) 19:34, 27 February 2008 (UTC)

Slate

If anyone wants to mention a study done that found that about one percent of Wikipedia's contributors control most of the content, a good reference is an article at Slate here. —134.139.135.84 (talk) 00:00, 28 February 2008 (UTC)

• That could be a good little factoid, but I don't know if it belongs on the article. Undeath (talk) 03:32, 4 March 2008 (UTC)

Spelling Error Needs to be Fixed

When I typed Wikipedia into the search bar on the left hand side I read for a minute and then came down to the 'Reliability and bias' section. There I found a really small spelling error that should be corrected. In the first paragraph of that headline is dispalyed here:

"Wikipedia does not require that its contributors give their legal names or provide other information to establish their identity. A 2007 study by researchers from Dartmouth College found that anonymous and infrequent contributors to Wikipedia are as reliable a source of knowledge as those contributors who register with the site..."

The Italic text is techonally a grammer error. I tried to fix it myself but the is a Wiki Personel Only Editing thing I guess. Just though I'd give you the heads up.

Ridem92

The page is protected so that people without Wikipedia accounts, like me, and those with new accounts cannot edit it. After your account is four days old, however, you will be able to fix it yourself if no one else does. — 134.139.135.84 (talk) 22:55, 28 February 2008 (UTC)

Am I missing something? Where's the mistake? The JPSwirlface (talk) 00:32, 1 March 2008 (UTC)

Merger with Deletionism and inclusionism in Wikipedia

I propose that we merge the above article into here. While I believe the topic (Deletionism v.s. Inclusionism) is a valid encyclopedic topic because of the media coverage, I don't think it merits the detailed standalone article. The issue is not currently mentioned in the Wikipedia article, which is not good at all, and it seems to make sense to discuss it here in a succinct manner. -- Taku (talk) 02:41, 1 March 2008 (UTC) I mean the problem with the above article has to do with its "proportion". The "deletionism v.s. inclusionism" is a subtopic of the more general topic on "Wikipedia community", which is discussed in the content and internal section in this article. Giving far larger space for the subtopic rather than its parent topics makes little sense. Of course, one could argue that "Wikipedia community" (which is currently redirected to here) merits a standalone article, but that's another issue. General speaking, I think we need to have the less amount of text discussing Wikipedia and its related topics than we currently have. -- Taku (talk) 02:50, 1 March 2008 (UTC)

• I disagree--I think specificity of topics is important and that separating different topics is important as well. I think that the Deletion and Inclusion article is distinctly different from the general Wikipedia article and thus should remain separate. I think that every issue should have its own topic without "shorting" it by not giving it the full detail and credit that each topic deserves, especially the topic of Wikipedia, considering that without it we obviously wouldn't be here. Cory Parkinson, Composer (ASCAP)/Pianist/Vocalist (talk) 05:35, 2 March 2008 (UTC)
• Merge issues were pointed out at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Deletionist versus Inclusionist Controversy. –Pomte 18:16, 2 March 2008 (UTC)
• I also disagree. This page is 74 kilobytes long. and growing. There's a good reason why sub pages and sister articles exist. Mkdw^talk 21:33, 2 March 2008 (UTC)
• I disagree. This page is long enough as it is. Also, the deletionism isn't necessary to explain wikipedia. Undeath (talk) 03:32, 4 March 2008 (UTC)
• Oppose. As Mkdw pointed out, the daughter article is much too long to merge back into the parent. I do wonder if the deletion v. inclusionist article should be moved into the Wikipedia namespace, as to minimize self-references. Lovelac7 00:39, 7 March 2008 (UTC)

Vikipedia

Does anybody want to tell me why Vikipedia redirects to the Wikipedia article? Joelster (talk) 23:55, 4 March 2008 (UTC)

What's Vikipedia? Since no articles in Wikipedia links to it, the redirect is probably unneeded. -- Taku (talk) 23:59, 4 March 2008 (UTC)

My point exactly. Joelster (talk) 00:52, 5 March 2008 (UTC)

Hi, I don't remember my exact reasons for creating the page, but I suspect it's because "Vikipedia" is the name of Wikipedia in various languages, or at least a declention of the noun form "Vikipedio"... see for example: [4] [5] [6] [7]. Vikipedio, Vikipediya etc are already redirects as well. Cheers — SteveRwanda (talk) 14:20, 6 March 2008 (UTC)

That's what I thought. That's fair enough I guess. Thanks for replying anyway. Cheers, Joelster (talk) 22:30, 6 March 2008 (UTC)

A techno-cult of ignorance

http://www.aetherometry.com/Electronic_Publications/Politics_of_Science/Antiwikipedia/awp_index.html

What about it? Do you want to use it as a source? Puchiko (Talk-email) 16:48, 5 March 2008 (UTC)

links= completly pointless on this article

why do you need links and stuff when you have everything you need to know on the wikipedia site? just have the makers edit this and ur done, all facts are down. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.229.235.205 (talk) 01:27, 6 March 2008 (UTC)

A misspelling in reference no. 52

The last name of Aaron Swartz appears to be misspelled in entry no. 52. (A moment ago I corrected the same mistake (and added a hyperlink) in the section titled "Content and internal structure.") Fagiolonero (talk) 21:22, 6 March 2008 (UTC)

Fixed. -- Taku (talk) 13:13, 8 March 2008 (UTC)

Letter as a source

Here is a posting by Larry, I am wondering if we can use it as a source.... according to this letter, wikipedia was his idea and Jimmy was opposed to it initially. [[8]] Sethie (talk) 00:14, 8 March 2008 (UTC)

OFF TOPIC Wikipedia im sorry

i am sorry for vandliseing a good advance wars artical please accept my apology

and could you please tell me who sent my warning letter —Preceding unsigned comment added by 70.171.73.96 (talk) 00:55, 12 March 2008 (UTC)

It's okay, just don't do it again :) The warning was issued by User:penubag. Puchiko (Talk-email) 19:18, 12 March 2008 (UTC)

Difference between logo used on Wikipedias and the one used on the multilingual portal

Why are two different versions used, although the differences are only minor ones. --72.75.52.243 (talk) 09:19, 12 March 2008 (UTC)

Style Section

I would argue that the eponymous wikipedia entry should have a section on style, addressing the style in which wikipedia articles are written. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Mwinslow s (talk • contribs) 05:16, 14 December 2007 (UTC)

That's dumb no one cares what style the info's in as long as it's there and it's accurate. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 207.190.172.3 (talk) 17:31, 13 March 2008 (UTC)

Archiving

This talk page has 69 KB (10460 words). This could cause a lot of technical issues so I think we should WP:Archive this talk page. I'd use the subpage method, cut-and-paste procedure. I'd leave the threads started in March 2008 still here, because they might still be active. What do you think? Note: If there are no objections by Wednesday, I will perform the archiving. Puchiko (Talk-email) 15:00, 15 March 2008 (UTC)

I've just set up auto-archiving on this page. All old discussions will be automatically archived by a bot every day. You don't need to do anything. Equazcion •✗/C • 12:38, 16 Mar 2008 (UTC)

Okay, thanks. Puchiko (Talk-email) 15:24, 16 March 2008 (UTC)

Can someone fix this?

This is what I see when I look at the article on Wikipedia:

http://s261.photobucket.com/albums/ii57/Moe_Epsilon/?action=view&current=screenshot1.png

You can click to enlarge the image. No, that is not vandalism. The image shows the beginning of the header, Wikipedia, but then has several spaces of white until the infobox has passed. The text "(IPA: /ˌwɪkɨˈpiːdiə/, /ˌwiːkiˈpiːdiə...." immediately starts after the infobox. Is there some way to fix that? — Κaiba 12:05, 16 March 2008 (UTC)

I just know that Wikipedia is just gone some time. I wonder it was on disscuion. Do you think I was a disscuion —Preceding unsigned comment added by Byean (talk • contribs) 13:28, 16 March 2008 (UTC)

I don't know what your talking about, but I found the problem. After updating my Internet Explorer and testing a different infobox my personal sandbox, I discovered that it was the text itself that caused this error. The text "({{IPAEng|ˌwɪkɨˈpiːdiə}}, {{IPA|/ˌwiːkiˈpiːdiə/}}, {{IPA|/ˌwɪkiˈpiːdiə/}}," created a single line of text which made the infobox collide with it, making the text reset at the bottom, as shown here I added a <br> tag in the beginning and the text was reduced in size, causing the text to become normal again as seen on http://s261.photobucket.com/albums/ii57/Moe_Epsilon/?action=view&current=screenshot2.png

Regards, — Κaiba 14:16, 16 March 2008 (UTC)

Maybe something else can be shifted rather than adding a seemingly arbitrary line break? I had to do a double take when I looked at the first line because I thought my browser was doing something wrong. The reason that this was noticed until now was because the screen resolution you are using is very low. It's been without the line break for a long time now, and I think we should keep it that way until more discussion is made about this. Gary King (talk) 03:58, 18 March 2008 (UTC)

This is not a new thing, I saw this error months ago but didn't say anything, thinking that someone might be able to fix the problem. I tried altering the infobox in a personal sandbox of mine and updating my browser to the latest version of Internet Explorer. The text is the only thing causing this error. Internet Explorer is the most widely used net browser there is, and making so many people see this error because you don't like a line break is unacceptable. — Κaiba 13:30, 18 March 2008 (UTC)

FA

Why isn't this a featured article, I mean It's been on here for such a long time and seems okay... LOTRrules (talk) 20:04, 17 March 2008 (UTC)

FA isn't for okay articles, it's for outstanding articles. Also this is a former FA. Equazcion •✗/C • 20:16, 17 Mar 2008 (UTC)

Editing rules

The more important articles on wikipedia often have the padlock symbol, meaning that the ordinary user can't edit them. For example, today, I looked at the articles on "global warming", "Brezhnev", "The Soviet Union" and "wikipedia". I think I'm right in saying that all of these articles had the padlock symbol. A "no rules" version of wikipedia (i.e everyone allowed to edit anything) would be interesting, although no doubt some of its articles would be turbulent and ever-changing. It would also be interesting if several versions of an article were allowed; e.g. "Margaret Thatcher Article A", "Margaret Thatcher Article B", "Margaret Thatcher Article C", etc. Different points of view might emerge in the different versions. Another point: the writing style of wikepedia articles is worth commenting on; it's a rather unique style. [Martin] —Preceding unsigned comment added by 91.106.36.179 (talk) 18:29, 23 March 2008 (UTC)

The padlock does not indicate that an article is important, but that it has been protected due to frequent vandalism. See Pizza for an "important" article that is not protected, and see Faggot for a fairly unimportant article that is, for obvious reasons, protected. Full protection is rare - articles which draw a lot of vandalism are usually semi-protected, meaning that in order to edit the page, users must be logged in (see Wikipedia:Why create an account?), and sometimes auto-confirmed (meaning they have had an account for at least 4 days). This level of protection has been found to be very good at keeping vandalism out, while letting constructive editing take place - in other words, protection has no effect on what direction an article moves in, it merely saves work for vandal fighters.

Regarding articles with different points of view - that is something we specifically try to avoid on Wikipedia. Wikipedia is an encyclopedia, not a collection of opinions, and all articles should present a neutral point of view, meaning that all relevant facts are presented without judgment, the article represents a worldwide view, and in cases where evidence is conflicting, the point of view best supported by evidence is given prominence (though significant conflicts are discussed). Because of this policy, content forking, or having two articles that treat the same topic from different points of view, is expressly forbidden. When editors disagree on content, these disputes are worked out on talk pages, not in the articles themselves. — Swpb^talk.edits 20:42, 23 March 2008 (UTC)

Help Me Wikipedia

Someone at my school had the smart idea to vandalize a post and now we cant edit wikipedia at my school could you lift this ban somehow because i love to edit things the right way —Preceding unsigned comment added by 70.171.73.96 (talk) 17:14, 24 March 2008 (UTC)

Create an account! Once you do, you'll be able to edit Wikipedia even when the school IP is blocked.
Also, don't worry about the block on your school's IP. Such blocks are typically rather short (24-48 hours for a first time offence). I don't think I can provide any more help without further information, I don't know the IP address of your school. Puchiko (Talk-email) 17:36, 24 March 2008 (UTC)

Word Count

Where is the word count for the English Wikipedia obtained? I looked at the page linked to by the second endnote, but couldn't find any word counts.--Magicwith4 (talk) 08:53, 26 March 2008 (UTC)

External Link Calling for POV Edits

I just deleted an external link which seems to urge readers to make POV edits. This was inserted - rather brazenly - as the very first external link, above even the multilingual portal. It's a link to an article in the Israeli publication Haaretz containing the following exhortation:

Saranga says Wikipedia is generally fair in regard to Israel. He is unfazed when he hears that the entry on Israel mentions the word "occupation" nine times, whereas the entry on the Palestinian People mentions "terror" only once. "It means only one thing: Israelis should be more active on Wikipedia. Instead of blaming it, they should go on the site much more, and try and change it."

This link was inserted on February 3rd, almost two months ago, by David Shankbone. Am I mistaken, or is this not appropriate? Nonplus (talk) 00:46, 28 March 2008 (UTC)

I should also add that it's an article largely about himself.

The first order of business in rebranding Israel might well begin with David Shankbone's mother. According to her son, her first instructions upon learning he would be traveling here were not to ride the bus, not to go to Gaza and run if he saw anyone "praying to Allah and sweating".

How is it appropriate to add this article as the first External Link on the entry about Wikipedia? Nonplus (talk) 00:56, 28 March 2008 (UTC)

once again

this page shouldn't exist, we've had this discussion too many times, i feel like stopping contributing until this page is gone.

--Harlequence (talk) 03:29, 17 March 2008 (UTC)

It should exist, because it does. Sorry, that's how the universe works. Argueing with reality is a great way to loose.

Maybe you don't want it to exist, and that is a whole different ballgame.

If you'd like to continue to contribute, please do. If you don't want to... we understand... though maybe not your reason WHY, since you didn't really spell that out. Hohohahaha (talk) 03:52, 17 March 2008 (UTC)

I don't feel like looking through the sixteen archives on this page, please link to or summarise the discussion you are referring to, thanks!
Wikipedia is a notable, valid topic (even Britannica has an article about us) so I don't see why we shouldn't have a page on ourselves (our goal is to create the complete sum of human knowledge, keep that in mind). --Puchiko (Talk-email) 13:39, 17 March 2008 (UTC)

I'm not aware of the previous discussions but they're probably based on a conflict of interest claim. How can we write an article on ourselves? My answer is we can do it because we have to. There's no one else who could do it, and there needs to be an article on so prominent a topic. If a policy's technical restriction prevents us from doing what is clearly needed in the interest of Wikipedia's main goal, it needs to be ignored. Equazcion •✗/C • 15:02, 17 Mar 2008 (UTC)

I believe that some people have also tried to claim to use WP:NSR ans a reason to delete. This however was quickly rejected since that rule applies to Wikipedia sourcing itself and not Wikipedia cannot be mentioned at all. I also agree with Harlequence that we have had this discussion too many times but for the oppoiste reason. All the arguments aginst having this article have been strongly rejected and disproven on muliple occasons and making the same case yet again is being a dead horse. --76.66.188.139 (talk) 21:44, 19 March 2008 (UTC)

Not to open a new discussion about this, but I strongly believe that this page must exisa, and has the "right" to exist just like any other page on Wikipedia. It's not an advertising page, it's an encyclopedia one, offering encyclopedia info. The best part is that it's made without being influenced by the fact that it is on Wikipedia. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Diego pmc (talk • contribs) 21:23, 21 March 2008 (UTC)

Did you read the template placed at the top of this page?? This page should be here. Period, end of sentence. --</post> Geek45 (talk) 16:38, 29 March 2008 (UTC)

"Not suitable for the main page"?

Yeah, I know that showing an article on ourself would make Wikipedia look sort of...vain...but I never knew that featured articles could be barred from the main page. Could someone give me another example? (I read this from the FACs, I know this isn't FA anymore, don't worry). Teh Rote (talk) 16:14, 26 March 2008 (UTC)

The only one, to my knowledge, that Raul won't choose is Jenna Jameson The Placebo Effect (talk) 16:52, 26 March 2008 (UTC)

An article about a porn star...I see. I suppose that makes sense, but I don't think any article should be barred from the main page if it truly is good enough for the barnstar. Teh Rote (talk) 01:34, 29 March 2008 (UTC)

Wikipaedia?

The article doesn't mention why "Wikipedia" isn't called "wikipaedia" - I don't know why it is the case, but surely there must be a reason for the (deliberate?) spelling mistake? Bensonby (talk) 12:34, 25 March 2008 (UTC)

Same reason "Encyclopedia" is correct. They're alternate spellings, one not being more correct than the other. The "ae" conjunction is, I think, considered fairly archaic and isn't used very often anymore. Equazcion •✗/C • 12:46, 25 Mar 2008 (UTC)

Oh, ok, I've just never seen it spelt without the "ae" before. I thought it might be some subversive internet thing :-p

Its not an anglo-american difference is it? Bensonby (talk) 14:39, 25 March 2008 (UTC)

With encyclopedia it kinda is:
American English: encyclopedia
British English: encyclopedia and encyclopaedia is correct
However, I feel that "Wikipedia" is a name. So just like Pearl Harbor can never be spelt "harbour", just I think Wikipedia is always Wikipedia. If your name was "Sara", I wouldn't spell your name "Sarah" even though that's also a correct spelling. Puchiko (Talk-email) 19:35, 25 March 2008 (UTC)

Good question though, because i know the Encyclopaedia Britannica uses the "ae" . --</post> Geek45 (talk) 16:41, 29 March 2008 (UTC)

No one's questioning the the "ae" spelling of encyclopedia. Wikipedia was started by Americans, so it uses the American spelling. Britannica was started by Brits, so it uses the British spelling. Simple as that. --DearPrudence (talk) 04:45, 31 March 2008 (UTC)

Good point about the "Wikipedia" being a name. My last name is "McMahon" and many people spell it "McMan". This upsets me.:(--Wikimichael22 (talk) 17:12, 5 April 2008 (UTC)Wikimichael22 —Preceding unsigned comment added by Wikimichael22 (talk • contribs) 17:10, 5 April 2008 (UTC)

Wikipedia makes BBC news on March 31, 2008

I heard on the news tonight (the article was at the end of the six o'clock news on BBC Radio 4, that today, Wikipedia saw its ten millionth article. If you go to this website:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/technology/2008/03 you will see how the BBC covered this story. ACEOREVIVED (talk) 21:11, 31 March 2008 (UTC)

Where are the 684 million Wikipedians?

This article claims there are about 75,000 active contributors for this encyclopaedia. Is there any way to locate them back to the country of residence? Also, where are the requests to the server coming from? I would like to make a bubble map like this.

Visitors to wikipedia.org in 2008

Assuming that Compete data and Alexa data are correct, why is wiki so popular in South America?Anwar (talk) 07:49, 10 April 2008 (UTC)

Not so important, but still: I think the colors are confusing! I see red as either "a lot" or "bad" and green could be interpreted in a similar fashion. How about a more neutral color scheme? And also, (more importantly!): the map is missing me! ;D --Apis O-tang (talk) 19:55, 11 April 2008 (UTC)

Red and Green are staples in any modern colour scheme. I adopted the traffic-sign model and inserted a intermediary Yellow (instead of Blue). These three colours can be rendered even in pretty old legacy computer screens. All remaining 16.5 million colours are derivatives of RGB. Else, the reader may see only shades of Black and White. The primary motive for colour choice was usability, not aesthetic appeal.Anwar (talk) 12:13, 12 April 2008 (UTC)

That is a very good point, but there are other colours that are available even on screens with very few colors. Just wanted to point out that people might have values associated with the traffic-sign colors. I agree that usability is the most important factor. --Apis 22:29, 12 April 2008 (UTC)

I'm wondering about what someone can put on their user page

I was wondering if someone may type a story on their user page and leave it accessible to anyone who goes to their user page. I think that it may be a good idea for young writers who want to be critiqued, but want to stay hidden beneath their user name.Belazael (talk) 23:13, 3 April 2008 (UTC)

That's a great idea, but Wikipedia isn't the place for that (see WP:USER and WP:NOT). I'm sure there already exists wikis for this purpose. Uncyclopedia is a could be a good option for things that are more humor-oriented. There's always Wikibooks for textbooks and manuals and Wikinews for journalism. There's plenty of other options in Category:Wikis. -- Ash Lux ^{(talk | contribs)} 04:21, 4 April 2008 (UTC)

The specific policy about user pages is at: Wikipedia:User page. It begins with: Wikipedia provides user pages to facilitate communication among participants in its project to build an encyclopedia. So putting a story up for crituque probable not appropriette. I would however suggest the site DeviantArt. --Puchiko (Talk-email) 10:38, 4 April 2008 (UTC)

Wikipedia has an article about itself

Note: The heading was added by User:Puchiko to improve clarity.

Hi! I hate to say this, but it seems wierd Wikipedia has an article about itself.--Gladboy101 (talk) 22:58, 1 April 2008 (UTC)

This is a useful link if you want it http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/7347766.stm —Preceding unsigned comment added by 79.72.120.252 (talk) 20:42, 15 April 2008 (UTC)

Britanicca has an article about itself too. It also has an article about Wikipedia. I see no reason why Wikipedia shouldn't have an article on itself. --Puchiko (Talk-email) 13:52, 2 April 2008 (UTC)

In response to the comment by Gladboy101, the question of whether Wikipedia should have an article on itself has been raised many times before, and the unanimous agreement has been that it should. ACEOREVIVED (talk) —Preceding comment was added at 19:35, 2 April 2008 (UTC)

"The Truth According to Wikipedia" documentary film

After correcting an error I made regarding the title of this new 45-minute documentary about Wikipedia (and repeating the error in the url of the citation because I had to work hurriedly from memory rather than being able to cut-and-paste), another editor undid the addition:[9] No problem, but I think this film is really worth a mention somewhere in the article, since it would be of interest to the average person looking up Wikipedia for the first time and is available to be viewed online at YouTube. Here is a direct link to the page I cited if anybody is interested in watching it and offering feedback on whether they think it is worthy of inclusion here:

http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/04/08/the-truth-according-to-wikipedia/ An unattributed source (talk) 16:45, 9 April 2008 (UTC)

Sorry. I thought it was a vandalism or something, since the article called "Truth About Wikipedia" (or something) was deleted for being non-sense. I'm undoing my edit. -- Taku (talk) 08:35, 10 April 2008 (UTC)

Unless there is a reliable source mentioning this documentary, I doubt it is worth of mention somewhere in the article. It's not our job to promote non-noteable documentaries, no matter what they're about Nil Einne (talk) 12:58, 10 April 2008 (UTC)

I agree we must not promote non-notable films. On the other hand, are we sure that this is really a minor documentary? From what I know, it aired in Netherlands. -- Taku (talk) 21:19, 10 April 2008 (UTC)

Bias?

Does anybody get the feeling that this page is rediculously biased? I love Wikipedia just as much as the next addict, but I can't help feeling like this needs one of those {{POV}} tags. Anyone else? Lesserm (talk) 04:03, 13 April 2008 (UTC) By Ico

Hmmm... could you pinpoint the exact sentences? Looking at the article, it does display Wikipedia in a favourable light, but it also includes a criticism paragraph in the lead, and a whole section in the body of the article. Puchiko (Talk-email) 10:55, 13 April 2008 (UTC)

http://wikipediareview.com/blog/20070827/the-true-history-of-wikipedia/ 84.245.22.189 (talk) 14:37, 13 April 2008 (UTC)

The piece seems to be more on History of Wikipedia rather than this article. I really don't think the issue is about the interpretation of the history; it's more to do with the space. This article is already long, and there is just not a room for the detailed account of how the original idea for wikipedia was formed. As to the above, I can certainly image that the article might read in favor of wikipedia, in part because we all have Wikipedia:Conflict of interest with it. So, specific suggestions for changes are welcome. -- Taku (talk) 22:52, 13 April 2008 (UTC)

I do like how they have locked the page so you can't edit it! —Preceding unsigned comment added by 149.142.126.245 (talk) 22:39, 16 April 2008 (UTC)

If you do want to edit this page, create an account and log in. Jons63 (talk) 22:47, 16 April 2008 (UTC)

Anyone with an account older than four days can edit it. It is only locked to prevent vandalism. Puchiko (Talk-email) 14:51, 17 April 2008 (UTC)

AntiWikipedia

Given that Wikipedia has articles on Uncyclopedia and Conservapedia, would it be fair if it were to include a website on "antiWikipedia", the website dedicated to material deleted from Wikipedia? ACEOREVIVED (talk) 20:19, 15 April 2008 (UTC)

Only if you can prove the notability (WP:NOTABLE) of the site. There's also some information at Wikipedia:WikiProject Websites#How do I know if a Website is worth noting in Wikipedia. Puchiko (Talk-email) 20:48, 15 April 2008 (UTC)

Criticism section

I'm wondering if I can solicit some thoughts on the organization of the article. I don't want to be biased, but I think we should get rid of the criticism section. This is per Wikipedia:Criticism. Basically, the problem is that the language like "wikipedia has been criticized for such and such" is a poor writing style. The section also contains some general discussion not so related to the criticism of wikipedia. For example, I don't know why it discusses the idea of "stable versions" (and actually I'm not sure if the article needs to mention internal proposals within wikipedia.) As the aforementioned page suggests, it's best to get rid of the section and organize the article in terms of content, internal structure, history, cultural significance, etc. I think some parts of the criticism section should go to the history section. For example, the Seigenthaler incident might be better discussed in the history section because what is significant is not the incident per se, but its consequence; it led to the adaptation of policies or guidelines. -- Taku (talk) 22:55, 22 April 2008 (UTC)

Given that criticism is an important aspect of the article, and has a detailed article of its own, I would be against removing just for the sake of removing. If an article has subarticles like this one I think they are a natural choice of sections to facilitate summary style. One alternative to a section specifically on criticism could perhaps be 'appraisal of Wikipedia' with main articles reliability and criticism, as this would recognise that reliability and criticism are closely related. Given their lengths, though, it would probably end up being broken itself into 'reliability' and 'criticism' subsections, so it would still have a section. Actually, I think I'll do this now *adds new section*

Your thoughts would also be welcome on Talk:Reliability of Wikipedia, where I have raised the question regarding the content, organization, naming and such of these articles. Richard001 (talk) 04:13, 25 April 2008 (UTC)

Yeah, adding a new section is probably a good idea, for the two topics are closely related. Just to clarify, I am not advocating simply deleting the criticism section, for wikipedia, has, as we all know, been receiving lots of criticism. In any case, I read some of your comments in wikipedia-related articles, and I think you and I seem to have the similar concern. For example, I'm with you on Deletionism and inclusionism in Wikipedia, which looks somehow out of place from an overall organization. I don't think we are alone in thinking some sort of clean-up is needed in this area, especially regarding organization of the materials.

Let me first respond to your suggestion at Talk:Reliability of Wikipedia. (I want to keep the discussion at one place.) I don't think the "quality of wikipedia" or such is a good way to frame the topic. In my view, the issue is more about how the public interacts with wikipedia. Teachers don't like students using wikipedia for research; a notable public figure finding his biography containing erroneous information, etc. As I pointed above, scandals involving wikipedia has happened from time to time, and they will continue happening. It is best to note some of notable cases in the history section here or History of Wikipedia. I even suspect that the discussion of Nature's famous piece comparing wikipedia and britannica might belong to the history of wikipedia since the piece is rather old now and doesn't reflect the present status of wikipedia. The format at "Content and internal section" (not actual content) is probably close to what I have in mind; a general discussion without citing particular cases.

I wish I could be more articulate, but Richard001, I think, you seem to be unsure as well. Perhaps Wikipedia is a new thing, and it would not surprise me if we find ourselves wondering about how to discuss it. I think it might be better if we just start reorganizing using subpages basically by eliminating duplications and adding appropriate headings. That's probably what I'm going to do anyway because that should give me a better idea. -- Taku (talk) 06:55, 25 April 2008 (UTC)

Donation

Wales spent £1 million on site maintenance in 2007.[10] How much of these is donor money?Anwar (talk)

Being a non-profit, wouldn't it all be donor money? Richard001 (talk) 04:45, 25 April 2008 (UTC)

Power corrupts

Note: The below text was originally added to the top of the talk page. Puchiko (Talk-email) moved it down here, added the section heading, and substituted {{unsigned}} No edits to the text were made.
Wikipedia is a great concept. Any article can be created (in theory), it's open to criticism and anyone can contribute so the information should be correct. That's the good bit, then it goes bad: an admin is on standby to make sure all edits are encyclopedic. Like communism, power corrupts. You'll notice in edit histories that what remains in an article is an admin's view disguised by sources to make it look neutral. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 79.72.79.175 (talk • contribs) 21:09, 19 April 2008 (UTC)

I disagree. Administrators have technical tools, but they aren't "super editors". I think that while a lot of our articles are POV, that's being worked out and I don't think that many admins push their POV into articles. I think it would greatly help if you could give a specific example. Thanks. Puchiko (Talk-email) 12:17, 20 April 2008 (UTC)

i have an issue with wikipedia and its self-imposed power. i heard about a small band in santa fe New mexico called shades of grey. I put all of the information i had in to a article on wikipedia but then some jerk deleted the article because of its lack of "notabilaty" they are jus starting out for goodness sake you high and mighty editors want more than there is for these people so just back off and instead of killing of musicans dreams get a F-ing life. Jesus!!!!!!! —Preceding unsigned comment added by Saxman101 (talk • contribs) 18:13, 3 May 2008 (UTC)

Portmandemic

I mentioned it a while back, but I'll raise it here again. The ever-present use of Portmanteau has become a bit of an in-joke among Wikipedians, and seeing it here in the lead section of our (just about) most prominent article adds to the word's mystique. But the correct term, if I'm not mistaken, is blend, more widely used by linguists and easier for a reader to understand. I know that Wikipedia's greatest weakness has been shown not to be its reliability, but its readability. Fishal (talk) 21:56, 22 April 2008 (UTC)

I've made a Request for Comment at Talk:Portmanteau. Fishal (talk) 21:34, 28 April 2008 (UTC)

Is this worth mentioning here?

On April 23, 2008, El Tiempo, Colombia's highest circulation daily newspaper, mentioned Wikipedia on its front page, calling it "'God' of the web". front page (Spanish)

Unless calling Wikipedia a 'God' in a major nation-wide publication happens more often than I imagine? :) Kreachure (talk) 16:28, 23 April 2008 (UTC)

Yeah, thanks for the input. :P To answer my own question, it's a pretty peculiar occurrence, but I deem it unnecessary for the purpose of the article (I already put it in the Wikipedia in the media page; I think it's enough having it there). Kreachure (talk) 17:30, 4 May 2008 (UTC)

Bold user-languages

Hi everybody, I just skimmed the Hungary article, and I wanted to read it in another language. But since there were soooo many, I really spent some seconds looking for the button. Wouldn't it be easy to print the often used-languages boldly (for registered users)? That would be a real convenience! 212.41.80.236 (talk) 09:10, 3 May 2008 (UTC)

I don't think its necessary to put emphasis on certain languages. The links are put in alphabetical order, I think that makes it clear enough. Seeing the Hungarian article though, I can understand that you got confused, as the link to the English article is on top of the list instead of under the Greek (Ελληνικά) link. Not exactly consistent. Cheers, Face 11:33, 3 May 2008 (UTC)

I just think it might be senseful to highlight the languages you "actually will click". There are probably very few people who will click often on a language they don't know... it thus might make sense to fade those you won't need out in order to simplify the website? For unregistered users it makes obviously no sense at all to highlight some (random?) languages.212.41.80.236 (talk) 12:33, 4 May 2008 (UTC)

683 million visitors annually

I feel a bit stupid asking this, but I can't find any mention of this number 683 million in [11]. Also, even if the number is true, I think this "visitors" is "US visitors" not international, making it inappropriate to mention in the intro. -- Taku (talk) 10:46, 6 May 2008 (UTC)

Holy Crap; It is self-aware. That aside, it's creepy that Wikipedia can pass the Turing test. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Variatas (talk • contribs) 04:36, 7 May 2008 (UTC)

An interesting bit of information...

Clay Shirky and Martin Wattenberg estimate the effort to create Wikipedia at 100,000,000 man-hours.[12] GregorB (talk) 22:12, 7 May 2008 (UTC)

What's up with that "bubble map"

Am I the only one who thinks that the bubble map makes no sense? It really doesn't tell us much. Those red dots seem completely arbitrary and I have no idea what "top market" means (the internet doesn't give an immediate answer either). The creator's user page has some information about what exactly a bubble map is, but it seems sort of technical and doesn't help with reading the Wikipedia one.

I suggest that it should be removed

134.10.22.103 (talk) 23:35, 14 May 2008 (UTC)

Please update...

The most recent Alexa rank is 8, not 7. I'm an IP and can't update. 131.111.247.194 (talk) 18:27, 10 May 2008 (UTC)

Done. Thanks for the tip. -- Taku (talk)

Possible ref

You might want to add info from this article that talks about where we get our traffic.[13] - Peregrine Fisher (talk) 17:49, 14 May 2008 (UTC)

Technically, the report talks about U.S. traffic to English Wikipedia, rather than Wikipedia in general in the global setting. I wonder, whether the 8,000 percent increase is really significant or not, because if you start from a small number, it is easy to get the phenomenal growth in terms of percentage. -- Taku (talk) 22:31, 14 May 2008 (UTC)

Maybe we should add sounds to wiki

when you search up a song or anything related to a song it be better if the song could actually be played e.g:If you type oliver twist musical it will give you a whole list of songs they sung, it would be even better if you could hear those songs! —Preceding unsigned comment added by 123.243.0.149 (talk) 09:07, 6 May 2008 (UTC)

It would be even better to not get sued into obvlivion. Nice idea, but not gonna happen. Rwiggum (talk) 00:00, 13 May 2008 (UTC)

Yup. Copyright is a huge issue. --Puchiko (Talk-email) 13:22, 15 May 2008 (UTC)

eternal vandalism?

seems like the ¨long term abuse page guy¨ (guess he meant page abuse) will carry on until someone else has a go. Popular wikipedia topics are rather like mountains... and vandals like the mountaineers who will always have a go ¨because its there¨... or will the software get REALLY clever? 81.103.112.205 (talk) 20:59, 13 May 2008 (UTC)

We have User:ClueBot to defend us! (Seriously, the software will have better and better regexps for vandal detection). ffm 21:07, 13 May 2008 (UTC)

And there's always page protection. Plus, don't forget about the huge Wikipedia community which keeps an eye out. --Puchiko (Talk-email) 13:23, 15 May 2008 (UTC)

Another comic about Wikipedia

Today's Married to the Sea comic mentions Wikipedia; I'm just throwing this out there in case someone wants to add it to the "culture" section (like we need another comic there...). ~EdGl (talk) 13:48, 15 May 2008 (UTC)

Deleted page

Note: The heading isn't by the original poster, it was added by Puchiko (Talk-email) to improve the organization of the talk page.
wats up with the deletion of the matt sabia page?! someone help me out here —Preceding unsigned comment added by Dmac4 (talk • contribs) 04:14, 16 May 2008 (UTC)

Hi. The deletion log, states the the article "Matt sabia" has been deleted four times. The most common reason was criteria A7 of the speedy deletion policy, which states: An article about a real person, organization (band, club, company, etc.), or web content that does not indicate why its subject is important or significant. This is distinct from questions of verifiability and reliability of sources, and is a lower standard than notability; to avoid speedy deletion an article does not have to prove that its subject is notable, just give a reasonable indication of why it might be notable. For more information, I'd advise you to consult: Wikipedia:Notability, Wikipedia:Why was my page deleted? and Wikipedia:Your first article. Good luck. Puchiko (Talk-email) 16:57, 16 May 2008 (UTC)

The Speedy Delete option

The Speedy Delete Option should not remove the page instantly, it should create a record or a log of the "to be deleted record" so if such needs to be disputed they page can be recovered other wise, you will lose potentially important information. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Justinkaz (talk • contribs) 19:20, 19 May 2008 (UTC)

It doesn't, it just tags it for deletion immediately (subject to admin approval) rather than going via a debate process. As for the information, if there is anything useful it wouldn't be speedydeleted. Oh, and please note this is a page for the article wikipedia, not for questions about wikipedia processes. Please go to Wikipedia:Help Desk. -mattbuck (Talk) 21:16, 19 May 2008 (UTC)

concerning one of the headings

should we perhaps change "...about the free encyclopedia..." to "...about the free wiki encyclopedia"?

are not we a wiki first? and an encyclopedia second. i get yelled at for bringing this up. if i'm wrong all i need is directions to another way to see this.

really i suppose i'm concerned because i want to take whichever view is best for wikipedia.

for now i feel that to consider ourselves an encyclopedia first, and a wiki second (if at all), would lack neutrality.

this could be our downfall, and i love this wiki more than any encyclopedia that has ever given me papercuts.

if you respond, understand the degree of sincerity in my suggestion and/or question. thank you.

--Harlequence (talk) 18:10, 21 May 2008 (UTC)

Lacking notability

The subject of this article is not notable enough for the wiki's standards and therefore this article should be removed. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 88.114.243.6 (talk) 19:53, 21 May 2008 (UTC)

It has plenty of reliable sources which give notability. See the message in large letters at the top of the page. -mattbuck (Talk) 21:12, 21 May 2008 (UTC)

History - service mark "provision of information..." and wrong ref

In the history section, this sentence in the last paragraph it is not referenced

Technically a service mark, the scope of the mark is for: "Provision of information in the field of general encyclopedic knowledge via the Internet".

Who defines the scope of the mark and under which terms? Is this a general and standard classification?

Besides, I corrected ref.30, (^ Jimmy Wales: "Announcing Wikimedia Foundation", 20 June 2003, <wikipedia-l@wikipedia.org>) which was pointing to a wrong ml message. Now it links to the correct announcement of the wikimedia foundation. Poderi (talk) 14:42, 26 May 2008 (UTC)

Larry Sanger image overlap

I rearranged the raw stacking order of the images of Larry Sanger and Jimbo Wales within this article. If you had a screen resolution of something greater than 1024 (for example 1280, like my laptop monitor), the image of Larry was getting overlapped with text. After analyzing, I noticed that the Nupedia logo was bumping Jimbo down a little bit, and since Jimbo's picture was a little below the text, Larry's picture was put a little below the text too, causing text overlap. Trading the ordering of these two images fixed the problem. I just thought I should document this here so everyone knows why I traded them. Hopefully this makes sense. _{TIM KLOSKE|TALK} 18:43, 26 May 2008 (UTC)

Hey, wait a second...

I just noticed something, with "available languages" it says "236 active editions (253 in total)", which is obviously impossible since there are more active editions than total ones. However granted the fact that I'm not sure how many total editions there are, I decided to put this here while I try to find out. --HALtalk 17:27, 20 May 2008 (UTC)

Uhm.... hate to break it to you, but 236 < 253, so it seems perfectly possible to me. -mattbuck (Talk) 17:32, 20 May 2008 (UTC)

Yeah, but 236 active editions is more than 253 total editions. The total number of wikipedias should be larger than the number of wikipedias currently active. --HALtalk 18:51, 20 May 2008 (UTC)

Again, 253 total editions is larger than 236 active editions. -mattbuck (Talk) 19:22, 20 May 2008 (UTC)

No i think you're confusing the number 236 (Two hundred and thrity six) with 263 (Two hundred and sixty three). 236 is smaller than 253.--Phoenix-wiki 19:28, 20 May 2008 (UTC)

Agh, apparently I can't read today... sorry about that, I fail. --HALtalk 03:28, 21 May 2008 (UTC)

oh my god. he told you three times ! Machete97 (talk) 23:36, 28 May 2008 (UTC)

We are wikipedia

I think this article should include some sort of refrence to the fact that this website is wikipedia. Thoughts? munchman | talk; 12:42, 27 May 2008 (UTC)

This is discussed in the guideline Wikipedia:Self-references to avoid. Here's the most important part:
Second, self-references limit the use of Wikipedia as an open source encyclopedia suitable for forking, as permitted by our license. The goal of Wikipedia is to create an encyclopedia, not merely to perpetuate itself, so the articles produced should be useful even outside the context of the project used to create them.
Imagine someone is reading the article "Wikipedia" on one of Wikipedia's countless mirrors, like Answers.com. Would the statement "this website is Wikipedia" still make sense? --Puchiko (Talk-email) 13:11, 27 May 2008 (UTC)

Wikipedia is supposedly factual, but it is actually controlled by a secret cabal of republicans seated deep within the bowels of a dormant volcano. The people must know! —Preceding unsigned comment added by 204.82.250.201 (talk) 13:14, 27 May 2008 (UTC)

Okay, thanks. munchman | talk; 10:01, 28 May 2008 (UTC)

Is there no-one at all on Wikipedia's payroll?

Is there really nobody on Wikipedia's payroll at all? This is the question I would still like to have answered after reading this fascinating article! —Preceding unsigned comment added by Rasmus Sonderriis (talk • contribs) 21:45, 27 May 2008 (UTC)

No people are on Wikipedia's payroll. However, Wikipedia is managed by the non-profit Wikimedia Foundation. This organisation does have people on its payroll. An organisation chart is below.

I'd advise you to consult the wikimedia staff page for more information (and photos of the employees). Puchiko (Talk-email) 16:54, 28 May 2008 (UTC)

Not trustable

If you think about Wikipedia in a certain instant of time you realize its definitely NOT a trustable source of information because somebody looking for fun might have edited the article some seconds before you copy the information to use as reference. I personally never get nothing from wikipedia, i only use its as comparative with my other sources. An open online encyclopedia is something that can grow but will never be part of people's choices when they are looking for genuine content.

Yes, on wikipedia Jesus Christ might have been an American president.

• Never get nothing?130.220.79.98 (talk) 00:16, 28 May 2008 (UTC)

Well, that's what the history of the page is for.
A good article cites its sources, and you can check those to check the facts. Wikipedia should never be your sole source of information. No source of information should ever be your sole source, to be honest.
For further information about the reliability of Wikipedia, I'd suggest the following pages:

• Criticism of Wikipedia
• Wikipedia:Replies to common objections#Trustworthiness
• Reliability of Wikipedia

Yes, I'll agree with you. Wikipedia isn't trustworthy. But take a look into Britannica, it's not error free either. Puchiko (Talk-email) 16:43, 28 May 2008 (UTC)

Answer: thank you! So, is WikiMedia's "developers" only making software? Has absolutely no-one been paid, for instance, for such a fabulous range of high-quality science entries? Or do some donors contribute by paying for other people's man hours? —Preceding unsigned comment added by Rasmus Sonderriis (talk • contribs) 23:16, 28 May 2008 (UTC)

All our editors are unpaid. ffm 00:40, 29 May 2008 (UTC)

Some developers, among other staff, are paid; see foundation:Current staff. — Wenli ^{(reply here)} 19:01, 1 June 2008 (UTC)

Wiki races...

I have added a link to wiki race in the culture section of this article... I haven't made many edits and I don't know if it is the type of content you want within this article. The wiki race article is new and needs links to it, which is why it is here. If it is not appropriate just reply to tell me why and in what context and which articles it should be linked to by. Wuzzie (talk) 10:45, 29 May 2008 (UTC)

Excuse Me...

Hey, well, I found this grammar mistake in the page if you would please change it. Here is the sentence:

Launched in 2001 by Jimmy Wales and Larry Sanger,[4] it currently the largest, fastest-growing and most popular general reference work available on the Internet.

As you can see, "...it currently the largest..." isn't grammatically correct. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Vincer 17 (talk • contribs) 11:02, 5 June 2008 (UTC)

Licensing Change ?

I administer Ultipedia, a site largely inspired by Wikipedia, but degfdsgfdgsdfgfdicated to capturing the culture surrounding Ultimate (sport). I have been discussing integrating articles from another source which are currently under a CC-BY-SA-NC license. Since I have written most of the content on Ultipedia I am not adverse to changing licenses, but the notion of continuing to deal with cross-licensing issues is very unappealing. Is it likely that Wikipedia will change licenses ? In order to maximise cross pollination efforts with Wikipedia (both present and future), what would be the best license to use for a nascent wiki ? Ivasara (talk) 17:56, 29 May 2008 (UTC)

All Creative Commons licenses are incompatible with the GFDL. If you switch to a CC license, you will not be able to use any Wikimedia foundation content. Wikimedia will probably never change licenses since that would require approval of all its contributors. — Wenli ^{(reply here)} 23:33, 29 May 2008 (UTC)

Watch this space. Wikipedia articles are licensed under "Version 1.2 or any later version published by the Free Software Foundation." Changes are coming to the GFDL itself, to make Wikipedia's GFDL-licensed compatible with some -- but not all -- CC licenses. However, it's very unlikely ever to become compatible with any NC licenses. See http://www.earlham.edu/~peters/fos/2007/12/wikipedia-is-free-to-relicense-under-cc.html -- The Anome (talk) 23:37, 29 May 2008 (UTC)

Source citation on trademark

In the final paragraph of "History" section there's a citation needed tag on the text of wikipedia's trademark. I'm just a newb and don't know all the editing procedures, and I'm not sure if this link is permanent, but here is the url for the United States Patent and Trademark Office's TARR page for the Wikipedia trademark: http://tarr.uspto.gov/servlet/tarr?regser=serial&entry=78483359 The text "Providing information in the field of general encyclopedic knowledge via the Internet" can be found under the section "Goods and Services". —Preceding unsigned comment added by 206.104.144.250 (talk) 08:41, 5 June 2008 (UTC)

Foundership

Sorry to bring this tedious saga back up but I was surprised after all the debate which has gone on that this article has certain references to "who is the founder" where really none is necessary. I have removed a paragraph-opening sentence, "Larry Sanger and Jimmy Wales are the founders of Wikipedia." It seems unnecessary to make such a firm pronouncement without mentioning controversy over the name. The history of article goes into the foundership in well-handled detail anyway. I also rephrased a couple of references to Jimbo as "Jimmy, the founder" and "co-founder Jimmy" to "founder Jimmy" which does the job of informing who it is we're talking about but leaves it open as to whether he is the only founder or whatever.

I hope that wasn't jumping the gun too much but thought I'd explain the reasoning here. BigBlueFish (talk) 11:19, 6 June 2008 (UTC)

It was. There is no controversy. Bramlet Abercrombie (talk) 11:30, 6 June 2008 (UTC)

Shall I just delete the load of citations like this one from History of Wikipedia then? Of course there was a controversy, and there is not one source which discusses that controversy and concludes with such a blanket statement as "Larry Sanger and Jimmy Wales are the founders of Wikipedia". In fact, neither does the History of Wikipedia article, so by the tenets of WP:SS nor should this one. BigBlueFish (talk) 14:31, 6 June 2008 (UTC)

Your citation says as a matter of fact: "The question of accuracy spurred Wikipedia co-founder Larry Sanger..." And there are plenty of other such sources, and yet you couldn't find a single one which explicitly denies Sanger's co-foundership, so it is not disputed - other than by Wales, which on itself doesn't make a controversy. Bramlet Abercrombie (talk) 14:40, 6 June 2008 (UTC)

I certainly agree with BigBlueFish on this one, as Bramlet well knows. This was an issue like 3 years ago but simply is not any more as the world has moved on. Thanks, SqueakBox 15:10, 6 June 2008 (UTC)

Sorry, you made a good point there. I hadn't seen that that article had treated Sanger as such, as a lot of others such as this one don't. I think in that case this should be reflected in the history of article. Also, why did you revert my removal of the label "controversy" if there is no controversy? The cited source doesn't say anything about controversy, so the label is misleading. If we need to cite something about the controversy for the stated fact, which I don't think we necessarily do (if the sub-article makes it sufficiently clear that the cofoundership is fact) then the current source used is inadequate. BigBlueFish (talk) 15:17, 6 June 2008 (UTC)

Using WIkipedia in the classroom...

Hello. My name is Amina. I am in middle school. My teacher says that it may not be good to use Wikipedia for research because anyone can edit it, and some stuff could be inaccurate. Can we discuss this topic and what we feel about it? I am just curious about what others would say. Thanks! I will create a Wikipedia account soon. --65.190.208.212 (talk) 21:30, 8 June 2008 (UTC)

Ok, here is my account: --Amina96 (talk) 21:34, 8 June 2008 (UTC)

Hi Amina. The official party line on this is that you should never use an encyclopaedia as a primary source - they're more useful for background reading. Most articles should give sources which will allow you to see where the information came from. I suggest you look at Reliability of Wikipedia for more information. This page is for discussion on how to improve the article. -mattbuck (Talk) 16:06, 10 June 2008 (UTC)

taicwondo

what is it —Preceding unsigned comment added by 81.132.252.29 (talk) 19:53, 9 June 2008 (UTC)

It's a martial art. See tae kwondo. Oh, and in future, please ask questions such as this on the reference desk. -mattbuck (Talk) 16:03, 10 June 2008 (UTC)

Criticism

Their should be a section about criticism. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 98.204.10.2 (talk) 15:48, 10 June 2008 (UTC)

See the relaibility and bias section, and the article Criticism of Wikipedia. -mattbuck (Talk) 15:59, 10 June 2008 (UTC)

Then someone link the critisism article to the "see also" section? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 92.118.191.48 (talk) 09:30, 13 June 2008 (UTC)

Criticism sections are discoureged on wikipedia per WP:NPOV as they are a POV magnet. ffm 16:08, 10 June 2008 (UTC)

MediaWiki versioning

Are all laguage versions of Wikipedia using the same MediaWiki version as en.wikipedia.org? I do not think so! Lets put it in the article.--Kozuch (talk) 13:09, 13 June 2008 (UTC)

That'd be WP:OR at best, in any case, AFAICT, they do. ffm 14:44, 13 June 2008 (UTC)

Timezone?

What time does Wikipedia use? It is currently a couple of minutes past midnight (in England), but when I sign this, it will say it has just gone 11. Why???

DineshAdv (talk) 23:04, 15 June 2008 (UTC)

UTC? -- Taku (talk) 23:16, 15 June 2008 (UTC)

Yep, per the words at the end of every timestamp (like the one that follows: ) ffm 23:43, 15 June 2008 (UTC)

But seriously, such questions belong at the help desk, this is for coordination of the article "Wikipedia". ffm 23:43, 15 June 2008 (UTC)

Thanks, I don't know why I didn't notice that. DineshAdv (talk) 15:42, 16 June 2008 (UTC)

What just happened?

I just saw the page just have 2 contributions. The talk page was even non-existant. What happened? Arienh4^(Talk) 22:02, 13 June 2008 (UTC)

You were probbably looking at the wrong one, as this page has no recent deletion entries in the log. ffm 23:44, 15 June 2008 (UTC)

I have a question. Do people who stop and reverse vandalism, add pages, and edit work for Wikipedia? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 75.62.141.11 (talk) 07:26, 19 June 2008 (UTC)

No, we're volunteers (with a very small handful of exceptions). — xDanielx ^T/_C\^R 10:10, 25 June 2008 (UTC)

Critics? Which ones?

My middle fingers, those ones.

The criticism section mentions repeatedly various critics and commentators but, never says who. The question I and possibly other want to now is what critics and commentators feel that Wikipedia has problems and for that matter what are their EXACT complaints? I my opinion even a few limited examples would help here. So I made up a template to (I hope) help. Here is a simple to follow template for the Wikipedia criticism section.

Insert the info, write the citation, and you're done.

"Many (insert method of communication.)(I.E. T.V.) commentators feel that Wikipedia is flawed. One such person is(insert commentator that operates on that method of communication.) I.E. Lou Dobbs) who feels/believes that Wikipedia is flawed because (insert reason here) I.E. loss of print encyclopedia business and further slump in the economy.)(Cite RELIABLE source here.)

Below is a simple example of this template.

Many T.V. commentators believe Wikipedia is flawed. One such person is Lou Dobbs who strongly believes that Wikipedia is has problems because he believes that it could put print encyclopedia out of business. Thereby leading to a further loss of jobs and an increased slump in the economy. [Random number of cititation.]

(P.S. Lou Dobbs was the only commentator who I could think of at the time.)Rengaw01 (talk) 17:18, 18 June 2008 (UTC)

I agree that we should avoid the use of weasel words. Criticism of Wikipedia and Reliability of Wikipedia have more detailed list of critics and their particular problems with Wikipedia. Maybe that's why this article doesn't mention many particular names of critics. But it still does mention few of critics, which seems sufficient to me. I'm not sure about the exact nature of the babys edit that has to be made that you think we need to do. -- Taku (talk) 22:12, 25 June 2008 (UTC)

All of human knowledge

There is a line in the article which reads Wikipedia is a project that attempts to summarize all of human knowledge. I dispute this, given that WP:NOTE and WP:INDISCRIMINATE both say that there are notability requirements for articles on here. -- JediLofty ^User_Talk 13:06, 26 June 2008 (UTC)

This is not contradiction at all. Non-notable topics, apparently, don't constitute a part of human knowledge. Human knowledge isn't "indiscriminate collection of information." -- Taku (talk) 13:11, 26 June 2008 (UTC)

But that's just it... Human knowledge IS an indiscriminate collection of information. I know that there's a branch of Tesco in the town where I live. It's not notable, and I couldn't find a reliable source to create an article about it (nor would I want to really) but it is part of human knowledge. :-) -- JediLofty ^User_Talk 13:27, 26 June 2008 (UTC)

To quote Knowledge in Wikipedia,

• (i) expertise, and skills acquired by a person through experience or education; the theoretical or practical understanding of a subject,
• (ii) what is known in a particular field or in total; facts and information or
• (iii) awareness or familiarity gained by experience of a fact or situation.

Since we are talking "human knowledge", I think that means knowledge that is known to humanity. (Not to a particular single human being.) Local knowledge, for instance, may be knowledge according to (ii), but it is not quite human knowledge. -- Taku (talk) 22:08, 26 June 2008 (UTC)

See also Wikipedia:General_disclaimer. It says "Wikipedia is an online open-content collaborative encyclopedia, that is, a voluntary association of individuals and groups working to develop a common resource of human knowledge." So, it is correct to say that the aim of the project is for the sum of human knowledge (though "summarize" may not be the best word, because we often have very detailed account of historical events, for instance.) -- Taku (talk) 22:13, 26 June 2008 (UTC)

spoken

The spoken version of this article differs significantly from the current text. Should this be removed until updated?RaphytheTurtle (talk) 16:15, 26 June 2008 (UTC)

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

I'd like to see a forum linked to Wikipedia for general discussions. I think it would fit in well. Place a "discuss" button at or near the top of every article. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 72.67.35.214 (talk) 16:18, 28 June 2008 (UTC)

i could not edit this article?

therefore I went to discussion.

to wikipedia: you said that i could edit this article.actually,i cant because everytime i see the small lock on upper right corner that means i cant edit.96.235.133.35 (talk) 00:37, 27 June 2008 (UTC)

Register a user name and you will not have this problem. You are more anonymous with a user name then without. JasonHockeyGuy (talk) 16:01, 29 June 2008 (UTC)

Um comments?

How do we put comments for answering questions? sorry, if im stupid but im new here.chessmate92 (talk) 00:49, 30 June 2008 (UTC)

I'm not sure if I understood what you meant. If on a talk page then you just post it along with the answer, with some explanation. Or do you mean Wikipedia:Peer Review?--Faizaguo 09:41, 5 July 2008 (UTC)

What chesemate meant was how do you reply to a certain comment —Preceding unsigned comment added by 121.216.24.234 (talk) 10:54, 5 July 2008 (UTC)

Try prepending ":" to your text. ffm 20:45, 6 July 2008 (UTC)

Wikipedia 1.0

Why does "Wikipedia 1.0" forward here? There's nothing about Wikipedia 1.0 in the text and I'm wondering what it is. Dazjorz (talk) 11:06, 30 June 2008 (UTC)

You can find out more about Wikipedia 1.0 (the published version of Wikipedia) by looking at Wikipedia:Version 1.0 Editorial Team. — Wenli ^{(reply here)} 20:38, 30 June 2008 (UTC)

Wikipedia Self Serving?

I believe that Wikipedia is using their article about themselves is being used for their own purposes. To defend this point, I have made a list of proof.

1. They say that Wikipedia is the “most popular work of general reference on the internet”. Though Wikipedia is becoming increasingly popular, there is no practical way to measure this, and therefore, that statement is just an assumption.

2. They said that Wikipedia is attempting to “summarize all human knowledge”. First of all, there is no way to do that, and they are aware of that. Secondly, they never said that that was their goal any time before. In fact, another article said that they are not trying to do that. They would have said that to get people interested in their project.

3. Also, in the criticism section, they seldom say any names of the people who criticized them. Could this be used so that people would forget about the flaws and enjoy Wikipedia?

4. At the top of the talk page, they say that their article is a Technology and Engineering Good Article. You can figure that they would describe the article about themselves as good.

5. Finally, they stated in the discussion page that the answer to the question of whether or not there should be an article about them “is a definite yes”. They hat obviously said that so that the article wouldn’t be removed and people would still be able to read that article.

Fellow wikipedians, I do love Wikipedia and use it regularly, but it removes from the quality of the work to have such a self serving article. Perhaps Wikipedia could be more humble in these types of articles. --Ojay123 (talk) 15:14, 1 July 2008 (UTC)

OK, in response:

1. Wikipedia is the #7 most popular website in the internet, beaten by Yahoo, Google, Youtube, MSN, Hotmail and Myspace, none of which are general reference works.
2. This is what encyclopaedias do generally.
3. Many people have criticised wikipedia, naming them would not add any more validity to their points.
4. See WP:GAC for what a good article is. It has nothing to do with the subject.
5. What would be the point of having an encyclopaedia which has articles about the top 10 most popular websites, but omits #7, especially since #7 is possibly the largest encycopaedia ever created?

Wikipedia does not have "humble" only WP:NPOV. -mattbuck (Talk) 15:24, 1 July 2008 (UTC)

should Wikipedia have an article on itself

? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 190.51.182.198 (talk) 19:51, 11 July 2008 (UTC)

A Question

Isn't it odd that an effort hasn't been made to bring this page to featured article status?—Preceding unsigned comment added by Brancron (talk • contribs)

It has- this article has been nominated several times, and even was a featured article for a little while. However, the current belief is that it does not meet our standards for a featured article. J Milburn (talk) 14:15, 16 July 2008 (UTC)

It's full of grammatical mistakes too. Probably not ready to be featured. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 72.136.92.148 (talk) 02:35, 20 July 2008 (UTC)

Formation of the Wiki Community

Hi, I'm trying to find out what led to the Wikipedia community's success in attracting admins? How did people get started as administrators, and what incentives are there for editors to become more involved? Any help would be much appreciated, --Tishadejmanee (talk) 15:59, 16 July 2008 (UTC)

Wiki-rampage

My friends and I (and most everyone I know) uses the term "wiki-rampage", "wikipedia rampage" or similar statements to denote the fact that one can link click on links to a chain of references so that one forgets the original topic he/she was pursuing. I think it deserves an article or something more prevalent in the definition of Wikipedia, as it is used more and more often as a tangible reference.

Do you know any reliable source documenting this? (I don't mean to be sarcastic; I'm curious.) -- Taku (talk) 08:19, 20 July 2008 (UTC)

[[14]] Probably not quite what you're looking for, but I bet the forum replies to this might be a good place to start. EagleFalconn (talk) 15:19, 24 July 2008 (UTC)

Zodiac, Wikipedia hack?

Over the last 2 days while I have been viewing various pages of wikipedia I have come across some sort of apparent hack. The articles of whatever page I was viewing have been replaced by total black, with various messages in white text by sombody known as "zodiac", as well as a code of some sort apparently including his social security number and a picture of a celtic style cross. I am extremely curious to know what exactly is known about this "zodiac" thing? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 78.150.24.27 (talk) 02:35, 23 July 2008 (UTC)

This is just vandalism and nonsense. One of the prolific vandals is doing it, and to whatever templates are both relatively widely-used and unprotected, so that the vandalism appears on the maximum number of pages. It's being dealt with just as vandalism is usually dealt with: it's reverted, the user is blocked (and we don't bother to give warnings first when it's obviously one of these repeat vandals), and we usually protect the template from further vandalism. Then we go about as usual, we ignore them: giving them prominence would only encourage them to continue. {{Nihiltres|talk|log}} 14:58, 23 July 2008 (UTC)

Wikipedia attracts 683 million visitors (from the US)

Is this true? A reference (that is this one [15]) is given, but I can't find this number mentioned in the source. The source says only that the monthly traffic is 53,312,459. I also don't think why the traffic from the US is relevant in the lead section. I mean, why US?, which is just a country. -- Taku (talk) 11:31, 25 July 2008 (UTC)

The population of the US is less than half of that... oh I see. They mean annual traffic. 53.3 mil x 12 = 683 mil —Preceding unsigned comment added by 72.136.92.148 (talk) 01:20, 1 August 2008 (UTC)

Oh, I see that's how the number came from. But this would be a logical fallacy, wouldn't it? The average monthly traffic isn't the same as twelfth of the average yearly traffic. (because, obviously, traffic increases or decreases each month.) -- Taku (talk)

To begin with 683 million does not make sense since 53.3 x 12 = 639.6 not 683. Next, 12 x the average monthly traffic is the annual traffic based on the time period that the average is from. So if the average monthly traffic figures are from one calendar/fiscal year, then 12 x that average is the traffic for that year. It is not the average annual traffic, for that we would need multiple years of traffic data and then average that data. Jons63 (talk) 03:52, 1 August 2008 (UTC)

So, the mystery remains. I really don't think the number was made up, I just couldn't figure out its source. As to the second point, you're right. "annual traffic" isn't the same as the average annual traffic. But the phrasing "Wikipedia attracts X million visitors annually" would suggest "average annual traffic", I think, (as opposed to, say, "in 2007 Wikipedia attracted X visitors".) For the record, I'm not against the inclusion of this kind of information; it's just the numbers have to be verified. -- Taku (talk) 13:48, 1 August 2008 (UTC)

Discussion

I removed

" In a 2008 interview, Jimmy Wales said that the foundation spent $2 million of donor money in 2007 toward site maintenance costs. The foundation shares hosting and bandwidth costs with Wikia, a for-profit company founded by Jimmy Wales and Angela Beesley. The Wikimedia Foundation received some donated office space from Wikia Inc. during the fiscal year ending June 30 2006.

In The New York Times in March 2008, Wales discussed a possible trivia game based on Wikipedia.

from the paragraph it was pasted in. I think part of this text should (could) be reinserted in another paragraph, but probably not the same. Basically, most of that stuff belong to history now. I find a headtitle in this article "Wikimedia Foundation and Wikia" slightly misleading to say the least. Wikia has not done anything special for our project for the past 2 years, except for sponsoring Wikimania (and yet, we do not mention sponsors in that page). Historically speaking, it is interesting to note that Wikimedia Foundation received 6000 dollars worth for office space from Wikia in 2006, but does this information REALLY belong to the Wikipedia article ? I think not. Also, the paragraph still mentions that the Foundation shares hosting and bandwidth costs with Wikia, which is clearly incorrect. I think that unless people can prove that this is true, it does not belong to this page.

Regarding the "possible trivia game", I think it is really a detail. Seriously, the Foundation staff (now operating the Foundation) is in charge of such decisions, not Jimbo. And the Foundation staff receive dozen of such proposals every month. What is really important in the long run ? What is really set up (eg, a DVD version, a print version etc...), or the mention that Jimbo thought a trivia game might be done, perhaps, one day, in the future, if such is decided by the staff and a good deal is proposed.

Last, I decided to mention chapters. This is bold, in particular in the english version. But to be fair, some chapters have a serious influence on some languages (eg, the german chapter on the german wikipedia) and several have contributed serious money (FAR more serious than the 6000 dollars worth from Wikia). Not mentionning chapters but putting a headline about Wikia... seems to me to not be reflecting the reality of what is happening right now.

Please discuss :-)

Anthere (talk) 22:44, 29 July 2008 (UTC)

While what you did makes sense, I think it is important to note the connection between WIkipedia and Wikia, which is, well, none, zero, zilch, except that the two are creations of the same person. Many people simply don't know the distinction. Actually, I think this represents one weakness of the current article: it doesn't really elaborate how Wikipedia is run, operationally. For example, Wikipedia asks for donation from time to time, and this isn't mentioned at all. The thing is I'm not knowledgeable in this area; in fact, I have never heard of Wikimedia chapters before. -- Taku (talk) 13:45, 1 August 2008 (UTC)

IPA pronunciation?

Why just audio file? My dog ate my speakers! Thanks. 124.102.43.240 (talk) 01:21, 2 August 2008 (UTC)

Weasel Wording

A single line in the lede had a {{Who?}} tag placed on it by an editor with the edit summary: weasel wording!. The line in question is:

Scholarly work suggests that vandalism is generally short-lived

To remove the weasel wording, with an edit summary of clarified scholarly work based on references supplied I changed it to:

Massachusetts Institute of Technology/IBM and University of Minnesota studies suggests that vandalism is generally short-lived.

This got reverted with the edit summary: But the lead isn't a place to get into details; it is ok to give only a summary in the lead

I then removed the {{Who?}} tag with the edit summary of: then we need to remove the "Who? tag also. I was just responding to another editors request for clarification as to who said those things

The {{Who?}} tag was then reinserted with an edit summary of: weasel wording

Someone needs to give in, either we need to clarify who wrote the scholarly works like my edit did or we don't but either way the {{Who?}} tag needs to come out. Jons63 (talk) 13:47, 2 August 2008 (UTC)

I'd probably suggest looking for some published form of this research and citing it as a source. Just my two pence. AlexJFox (talk) 22:46, 3 August 2008 (UTC)

There are 2 sources attached to the statement. One by University of Minnesota and 1 from MIT/IBM. I rewrote it to include who these sources are and it was reverted and then the who tag was reinserted. Do we need to specify who it is if there are attached sources? Jons63 (talk) 04:14, 4 August 2008 (UTC)

I'd say as long as you actually linked to a published report on the research and those links are in the right place in the article and foot notes are included if necessary then it's fine to include it. AlexJFox (talk) 21:37, 5 August 2008 (UTC)

The Picture

We should change the picture of the Wikipedia to be the picture of the article itself, creating an infinite loop. I believe that the enormous power of Wikipedia would create a Wormhole, thus unlocking the key to time travel! People would then be able to travel through time by going to time travel article, or to the article on a past or future date. The only problem is that this might cause the Universe to implode. GBizzle (talk) 20:49, 5 August 2008 (UTC)

That's a good point in theory, but Wikipedia is so powerful that I think the chances of the universe imploding is very great --Gokuslilbrother 20:07, 7 August 2008 (UTC) —Preceding FXunsigned comment added by Gokuslilbrother (talk • contribs)

Recursion

Hilarious as the inclusion of 'recursion' in the See Also section is, it probably counts as a self-reference to avoid; not only is it inaccurate on a mirror of the article, it's likely to be confusing if readers don't know where the article origniated. Any objections if I remove it? Olaf Davis | Talk 20:08, 8 August 2008 (UTC)

Self censorship

On 9 august 2008 the Dutch version of wikipedia was censored officially by a moderator. In the article nl:Lijst van vrijmetselaars uit België (list of Belgian freemasons) the history was partially deleted. In recent months it was debated if living belgian freemasons were to be included in the list. Because of worries for 'privacy' it was decided by the moderators only to include dead freemasons. All living freemasons were strikken from the list. After written conversation with the official Belgian 'commissie voor de bescherming van de persoonlijke levenssfeer', the official Belgian privacy commission, the history was censored and deleted were you could find historical edits of living freemasons. After a request to publish the documents ordering this action, the moderator would only publish excerpts, and not the full letters of the government body.This proces was later repeated on the history of my personal page (in which i had copied everything nl:Gebruiker:Stijn_Calle). So this amounts to self-sensorship done by wikipedia moderators themselves.

Note: Belgian privacy law is only applicable on Belgian territory. The server of the dutch Wikipedia is not geographically situated in Belgium, but in the US or another country outside the US. Thus Belgian law is not applicable on these servers.

Remark: Winston Smith's job in the ministery of truth (1984) was destroying past history and replacing it. This is happening in Belgium ON wikipedia. There is a name for this kind of action: censorship.--Stijn Calle (talk) 08:19, 10 August 2008 (UTC)

Following local laws when it isn't absolutely necessary to do so isn't a crime (literally!); either way please don't disrupt the article. Your change didn't make sense in the article without understanding the context of your change, which isn't mentioned in the article. I therefore reverted it. Please don't disrupt Wikipedia to make a point. {{Nihiltres|talk|log}} 13:29, 10 August 2008 (UTC)