Talk:Wikipedia/Archive 18

Archive 15

Archive 16

Archive 17

Archive 18

Archive 19

Archive 20

→

Archive 25

Editing Proposal?

I have an idea, but I'm not sure if it's ever been discussed before. To make Wikipedia a better place, and more useful (as in teachers will stop banning Wikipedia from research use), is it possible to have every edit go through a verification process where moderators decide if an edit is true, or if it is false and/or vandalism? This verification will occur before every post is viewable to the public. This will give the moderators more work, but hey, we could just request more moderators! And its not like this website is the easiest to moderate in the first place! —Preceding unsigned comment added by 99.141.230.195 (talk) 02:28, 3 June 2010 (UTC)

That is kind of insane. There is just too much information added daily for the people to verify. The number of moderators needed would be obtuse. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.4.65.225 (talk) 05:46, 4 June 2010 (UTC)

This particular talk page isn't for discussing proposals to Wikipedia's editing systems and/or policies. It's for discussing issues pertaining to the article about Wikipedia itself. What you have brought up sounds kind of like Wikipedia:Flagged revisions, so I'd recommend going there and taking a look at what's been proposed regarding that first. You can also discuss further issues or proposals to that issue here, or bring up other proposals or issues at the village pump. WTF? (talk) 05:54, 4 June 2010 (UTC)

It was just an idea that I had no idea where to put. I'll keep that in mind if anything else pops up in my head. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 99.141.230.195 (talk) 17:11, 4 June 2010 (UTC)

I need help making a teplate

How do you make a template like the see also one where you can add pipes within the template brackets and then add article titles. I need to make a template like this. Where I can write something like { {exampletemplate|title of an article} } Daniel Christensen (talk) 02:50, 12 June 2010 (UTC)

This talk page is for issues pertaining to the Wikipedia article itself.--69.248.1.200 (talk) 12:52, 27 November 2011 (UTC)

Link for "volunteers"

The first paragraph says "Wikipedia's 13 million articles (3 million in English) have been written collaboratively by volunteers," and "volunteers" links to the [[Volunteer|general volunteer page]. I think it should link to the [Virtual_volunteering|virtual volunteering] page instead, since these are specifically online volunteers, rather than traditional onsite volunteers, especially since Wikipedia is one of the largest examples of virtual volunteering. Comment by: User:Jcravens42

Beta version of Wikipedia

Wikipedia article does not contain any information about the new beta feature nor any content about wikipedia's future. Wikipedia staff should do something about this.

Servers in Korea decommissioned?

According to Wikitech [1] [2] and Ganglia, there are no longer Wikipedia servers in Korea, though even Meta-Wiki hasn't been updated and there seems to be no up-to-date server layout diagram.

Section on Criticism of Wikipedia

Any thoughts on adding a section on Criticism of Wikipedia? I know there is already an article dedicated to it, but having a section that sums it up briefly on here would be helpful. In it we can have a link (such as 'main article: Criticism of Wikipedia). I would draft it, but I'm not autoconfirmed yet, and this article is semi-protected. If nobody minded waiting a few days I could probably do it then or send it to somebody who is confirmed.--Alang814 (talk) 02:26, 21 June 2010 (UTC)

What we normally do is to have a header such as "Criticism of Wikipedia" with a link such as Criticism of Wikipedia to a main article, with a brief overview of what is covered in that article.Rodhullandemu 02:34, 21 June 2010 (UTC)

Yeah, that's exactly what I meant, although that's a much clearer way of saying it.--Alang814 (talk) 18:04, 21 June 2010 (UTC)

Editing/contributing on Wikipedia

I have recently tried to contribute to some articles on Wikipedia only to be rudely deleted and told off by other users. I simply can't understand how Wikipedia can claim to be free to contributors when in the end if someone doesn't agree with you they simply delete your message and start calling your comments vandalism. I really find this amazing. These 'guardians' of wikipedia are abusing wikipedia's most cherished principle of freedom of speech and expression. My comments were not rude but researched facts which did not agree with hard core long-term users. Some users even threatened to stop me from posting again. How can they possibly have such power and be the judges of comments. I would like to open a discussion about this. I think these wiki bullies are acting totally inappropriately. I just found this article which supports what I'm saying:- http://news.cnet.com/8301-17852_3-10309840-71.html —Preceding unsigned comment added by 130.102.158.15 (talk • contribs)

could you point to the edit that you introduced that is now reverted? Witty Lama 14:33, 30 June 2010 (UTC)

Not needed

(facepalms) We don't need this page. This wiki doesn't have enough room for pages ABOUT ITSELF. Seriously, we don't need pages for everything in the universe. -pgj1997 —Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.241.126.240 (talk) 04:56, 27 June 2010 (UTC)

Thanks for your contribution. Perhaps you'd like to find another article that you'd prefer to help with than this one. Witty Lama 14:32, 30 June 2010 (UTC)

Edit request from 71.109.148.127, 3 July 2010

{{editsemiprotected}} Please change

Except for a few particularly vandalism-prone pages, every article may be edited anonymously or with a user account

to

Except for a few particularly vandalism-prone pages and pages that are part of the Pending changes trial, every article may be edited anonymously or with a user account

because

As currently written, the article is incorrectly. Pages that are part of the Pending changes trial cannot be edited anonymously.

71.109.148.127 (talk) 21:40, 3 July 2010 (UTC)

 Not done Not quite right; certain flagged pages in the PCT can still be edited by anonymous editors, but their edits do not become visible until accepted. Since this may change when the trial ends, I don't see much point changing it for now. Rodhullandemu 21:50, 3 July 2010 (UTC)

Edit request from 71.109.148.127, 3 July 2010

{{editsemiprotected}} Please change Edits to specified articles would be "subject to review from an established Wikipedia editor before publication." to A trial is now in progress. During the trial, edits to specified articles are "subject to review from an established Wikipedia editor before publication." because current version of article incorrectly uses future tense to describe something that already began. 71.109.148.127 (talk) 21:47, 3 July 2010 (UTC)

 Done, thank you very much for spotting that.

Video of editing

I was just wondering if anyone here thought that this video might be useful? File:Editing_Hoxne_Hoard_at_the_British_Museum.ogv. It is the timelapse of part of the editing process at the Hoxne Challenge event held at the British Museum last week. I was the instigator of that event and so I'm obviously personally fond of the video :-) However, I also think that it might be the best/only video of Wikipedia being actually edited by actual people. Because the premise of the day was to get experts from the museum and wikipeida into the room together I think this is a unique video and therefore potentially valuable for this article. What do you think? Currently the video is in-use at the British Museum-Wikipedia collaboration page here Wikipedia:GLAM/BM Witty Lama 14:32, 30 June 2010 (UTC)

Unless anyone objects, I'll add it in a couple of days - probably in the "community" section. Witty Lama 12:51, 4 July 2010 (UTC)

Added. diff. Witty Lama 16:34, 22 July 2010 (UTC)

Addition to Related projects

Consider adding: "A number of third party applications are using information on Wikipedia as their main source of information. Wikify, for example, is adding Wikipedia links to all words in a text which have corresponding article on Wikipedia. A project using Wikipedia's multi-language feature to translate special terms between different languages exists ^{[Citatioin needed]}." Spidgorny (talk) 09:04, 5 July 2010 (UTC)

Alexa ranking

When I accessed the Alexa page, Wikipedia came up as 7th in the world, and 6th in US. Should we still keep the ranking, or should we change it to 7th? Pooh4913 (talk) 18:01, 7 July 2010 (UTC)

Privacy and tracking

In an era when increasing numbers of companies are installing tracking software on users' computers, it was interesting to see where Wikipedia came out in this study by The Wall Street Journal. [3] MarmadukePercy (talk) 16:27, 31 July 2010 (UTC)

Favicon.ico/wiki

In the list of most viewed articles for 2009, favicon is listed number four. The source is the Telegraph, which has a listing for "favicon.ico" at number four. Unless there was some greta media interest in facvicons during 2009, isn't this probably a slightly wobbly source, where the WP favicon has been interpreted as being an article? And, for that matter isn't "wiki" (placed at number one) probably the main page, not the article wiki?--FormerIP (talk) 09:56, 10 August 2010 (UTC)

Liberal Bias in Wikipedia

Wikipedia's systematic and proven liberal bias is well-known and well discussed - but yet this controversy is not mentioned at all in Wikipedia's article. Why? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 00Eregos00 (talk • contribs) 08:16, 10 September 2010 (UTC)

Anyone can edit Wikpiedia. You can! If you have some content on this matter that you feel is worth adding, and is well sourced, feel free to add it. If unsure, you may find it of value to discuss your proposal on the Talk page first. HiLo48 (talk) 08:53, 10 September 2010 (UTC)

Liberal bias? This is what American conservative websites and media such as Conservapedia like to say. They are very biased sources and would be unfit to cite in Wikipedia. I don't think it is socialist (the European word for 'liberal') myself, as many people of all sorts of backgrounds are represented on it, but Wikipedia policy helped along in that again, most 'proof' about this 'systematic bias' is in very right-leaning, biased websites as stated before. --Γιάννης Α. ^✆|☑ 01:30, 13 September 2010 (UTC)

Speaking as a European, although British editor, "liberal" is not a term of abuse here, and I see nothing wrong with a "liberal bias", as long as we understand what John Stuart Mill meant by liberalism. As regards this place, I take it to mean neutral point of view, which has fuck all to do with socialism, whatever the nay-sayers cited above may claim. Let's face it, their models of social interaction and political economy aren't that great in historical terms, so they have little credence here. Rodhullandemu 01:37, 13 September 2010 (UTC)

As a former resident of the USA, I can attest to the fact that the meaning of "liberal" is quite different over there than in Europe. In Europe, liberal is pro-individual freedom and does not have the negative connotation that American conservatives (or patriots or whatever) like to give it. Teixant (talk) 14:07, 13 September 2010 (UTC)

Agree with the above statement..however i do believe the more educated they are the more likely they are to understand the real meaning. Moxy (talk) 14:10, 13 September 2010 (UTC)

I cannot resist adding the fact that in Australia, Liberal is the name of the major conservative political party. Go figure. HiLo48 (talk) 02:37, 14 September 2010 (UTC)

This is not a forum for discussion about Australian politics, :( "supported by the non-profit Wikimedia Foundation[citation needed]" It says this in the article. This is Wikipedia do we REALLY need to cite where the funding from this website comes from? They say it all the time on the site and if you can't trust Wikipedia about their funding then can you trust them about their database or whatever, no. So please who ever put "supported by the non-profit Wikimedia Foundation[citation needed]" take down citation needed, it just looks dumb. I'm not trying to be mean, I'm just trying to get to the point, fast, and I don't want to spend time articulating it in a different manner. Thank you Cozzycovers (talk) 07:05, 15 September 2010 (UTC)

I have no intention of discussing Australian politics. I simply added to a discussion about the word, which had already mentioned its meaning in the USA and Europe. HiLo48 (talk) 07:49, 15 September 2010 (UTC)

I'm just kidding, I just like splitting hairs. I mean don't we all on the discussion page? of course I should not even be saying this on this page b/c it has nothing to do with improving the article anymore.66.231.146.77 (talk) 08:09, 15 September 2010 (UTC)

Gotta Love Wikipedia

I couldn't help but notice that, although Wikipedia RAVES on and on and on about how it is UNCENSORED and that it is all about cold hard facts (with a credited source of course) - and I am not trying to be mean, this is usually true - even sensative material is uncensored, no matter how much it might affend someone, it something is relavent to the article and properly sourced, it stays.

But i JUST CANT help but notice that the wikipedia page itself is CENSORED - that is - only "special" people can edit the page. Not some nobody like me. "Anyone can edit Wikipedia!" WRONG. "Uncensored" WRONG - yeah I know, it says in a couple places that "anyone can edit ALMOST every page" but not everywhere, and certainly not the people who I See on the talk pages - the advanced users, you know the ones who CONSTANTLY (and ignorantly) just post wikipedia rules instead of answering someone. BE BOLD they say - even on this page a heavy contributer says "Anyone can edit Wikpiedia. You can!"

Although in my experience here both of those things are true Much, MUCH more than not - it should not be part of Wikipedia's constant boastings about itself, and policies unless its true 100% of the time. Yeah Yeah I know, the Vandalism - but I never did any Vandalism, so why am I unable to edit a page like this? AND how do I know that this page or others were vandalized? Maybe wikipedia might abuse that notion on pages they don't want edited. Now, I am only half-kidding about this article, Im sure it was vandalized like there is NO tomorrow, but for many pages, I am unable to edit. Wikipedia keeps track of EVERYONE, user or not - even if you dont post any signiture, it eventually pulls your IP address. Why didn't they just ban people who vandalized - a month, then a year, then forever (banned from editing that is).

If wikipedia does not allow EVERY LAST article to be edited by ANYONE, than it is censored, because there is no way for a person like me to know WHY was an article shut down - I can see the old versions of the article? so what - anyone can type anything, real or fake. And I have no way of knowing who DOES get to contribute - people who donate? people who have been on wiki forever and edited 1000's of times and are obviously in love with wikipedia and will stay in its favor and bias? workers of wikipedia?

There are other approaches to vandalism, and until one is put into action, i belive wikipedia is partially censored - which is simply censorship, and I will find some credable source that defines censorship in a manner similar to this - and when I do I will request it be put on the wikiepdia article - and if it is not, then I will piss and moan, and cry like a little girlie baby wuss, and ill lock myself in my room and I won't come out till I'm 30 —Preceding unsigned comment added by Joeyo14 (talk • contribs) 08:51, 16 September 2010 (UTC)

This talk page is only for discussions concerning Wikipedia's article on itself. Oh yeah, and where'd you get the idea that Wikipedia is censored? Nobody else says it's censored. The pages being locked are locked for a very good reason: We can't let vandals put false information on them.--69.248.1.200 (talk) 12:59, 27 November 2011 (UTC)

Weird Al's Image

I don't believe it's necessary to have that Weird Al's image as its message "you suck!" is clearly directed to Atlantic Records and in the context it seems directed towards Wikipedia —Preceding unsigned comment added by 202.90.207.174 (talk) 08:14, 22 September 2010 (UTC)

Wikipedia

I have been using wikipedia as a source of information for my homeworks, and just for reading some articles. In school, my classmates keep telling me that wikipedia is not a reliable source and I asked why. Well, they just simply replied that they keep editing some pages and put wrong data into it. In my opinion, I think that wikipedia must not let these "editors" edit any more page, but this is simply a tedious task therefore I suggest that wikipedia remove the anonimity of the "editors" or any editor in general.

This is another topic that I want to discuss.

There are pages in which we can find the summary of books, novels, short stories, etc. I personally think that there is nothing wrong with it but the users just abuse it. They do not read anymore the real books assigned to them by the teacher and they would not even read the summary from wikipedia just copy and paste then print. Honestly, there are times that I passed my homework by just copying, pasting and printing(of course i wrote the source) without reading any part of it at all.

The idea of wikipedia is a total marvel it's just that people misunderstand its purpose and abuse it. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Greekfreak gf (talk • contribs) 15:43, 22 September 2010 (UTC)

Since 2001?

Has Wikipedia really been around since 2001? I have some vague recollections of some kind of online encyclopedia around the early 2000s, but I don't think it was until the end of 2003, maybe 2004 that links to Wikipedia articles showed up in my Yahoo! searches. What have other people's experiences been? I'm just curious. CreativeSoul7981 (talk) 02:09, 27 September 2010 (UTC)

Wikipedia has indeed been around since 2001, but not in its current form. Wikipedia used a much less aesthetically appealing interface until sometime 2002. It did not start really gaining popularity until around 2003-2004, which may explain why you did not hear about it until then. We have an article History of Wikipedia, which discusses these topics. In the future, please direct all queries of a factual nature to the Reference desk. This is the talk page, where you can suggest improvements to the article Wikipedia, not where you can hold general discussions. Intelligentsium 02:31, 27 September 2010 (UTC)

Edit request from 205.193.96.10, 30 September 2010

{{edit semi-protected}} As far as I can tell, the suffix of Wikipedia is Latin first declension, so it's plural is Wikipediae, not Wikipedias.

205.193.96.10 (talk) 22:01, 30 September 2010 (UTC)

 Not done I think your argument would have some merit if the word derived from classical Latin, but it doesn't, it's from modern Latin (i.e. medieval) and then derived from spurious Greek. Despite that, "encyclopedia" is a loanword into English language and therefore takes a local (i.e. English) plural. Furthermore, common usage supports an "s" plural. Rodhullandemu 22:09, 30 September 2010 (UTC)

Edit request

Please, in the section titled "Coverage of Topics", add a colon into the first item in the bulleted list. Thank you. Sean Michael (Seaners 2010) 16:25, 17 October 2010 (UTC) —Preceding unsigned comment added by Seaners 2010 (talk • contribs)

Just wanted to let you know that there is an overlap of image and text in the Cultural Significance section of the Wikipedia article. Nothing major, but the edit would make the page look a bit more neat. Thanks. DethariusXXX (talk) 06:03, 25 October 2010 (UTC)DethariusXXX

Tired of edit conflicts

Could you please fix your edit-conflict function. I am sick of giving time and thought to my edits and contributions only to have my contributions deleted by an "edit-conflict" message as soon as I submit them. No wonder people are leaving Wikipedia in droves. I might care enough about an issue to edit it once, but after my time and thought gets deleted by an "edit conflict" I just close and move on (I have a mortgage to pay). PLEASE FIX THIS!!! Do you want quality submissions or not? 121.73.7.84 (talk) 11:04, 2 November 2010 (UTC)

Do have a more careful read of the Edit conflict message. Your edit will still be there, right down the bottom. You just need to rescue it from the message page, go back to the discussion, then add it again in the right place. A small change to indenting may be required. HiLo48 (talk) 11:08, 2 November 2010 (UTC)

This is impossible to fix, and one of the intrinsic drawbacks to wiki functionality. You cannot enter text to a version of the page that is not longer recent. Every effort is made to reduce them, but unless quantum computing is perfected tomorrow they're impossible to avoid completely. If you do happen to be the Einstein of the computer age you can suggest fixes at Village pump (technical) (where you should have gone first, as this is a talk page for discussing an article on Wikipedia only, not technical aspects on Wikipedia.) And to be honest, if anyone is stubborn enough to cease contributing because of them, good riddance in my mind. Rehevkor ✉ 11:46, 2 November 2010 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Economy

I've redirect it from this article to Wikipedia:WikiProject Economics. Makes more sense, I believe (and this article does not even have an economy section, not that Wikipedia has an economy, I think, anyway...). --_{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| talk} 18:17, 4 November 2010 (UTC)

Encyclopedia

Hello, could someone add the info that the pedia in Wikipedia is greek: ἐγκύκλιος παιδεία Like the Wiki is from hawaian,...

-If you think something should be added, you can edit the page yourself, you know. You don't have to tell other people to do it.206.248.167.220 (talk) 21:01, 1 December 2010 (UTC) —Preceding unsigned comment added by 206.248.167.220 (talk) 20:50, 1 December 2010 (UTC)

thx Marasia (talk) 08:59, 18 October 2010 (UTC)

the first sentence

should state that this article is ON wikipedia, so that if someone is looking up Wikipedia and gets to this page, they will realize they are using Wikipedia (or a mirror) to view it! 84.153.222.232 (talk) 12:52, 6 November 2010 (UTC)

Wikipedia has a policy about trying to avoid self-references (WP:SELF).TheFreeloader (talk) 18:54, 6 November 2010 (UTC)

Well, that settles it then. Cheerfully withdrawn! 84.153.212.109 (talk) 11:25, 8 November 2010 (UTC)

Language editions visited in the single countries of Europe, 2009/2010 Image/Map

Please may someone fix it because the Map image says CY on Crete (Greece)...instead of the island of Cyprus to the east (south of Turkey). Says cannot discuss on the Image's discussion page and should discuss here/request Graphics team to change itEugene-elgato (talk) 19:45, 8 November 2010 (UTC)

I put a note on the authors talk page. Kmusser (talk) 20:20, 8 November 2010 (UTC)

Excellent, thank youEugene-elgato (talk) 20:33, 8 November 2010 (UTC)

Protection

Why isn't this page fully proteced (admin edits only)? It has been vandalised so many times I can't believe normal users can still edit it. たかはりい 05:46, 14 November 2010 (UTC)

Beautiful. —71.203.125.108 (talk) 20:45, 29 November 2010 (UTC)

Anyone can edit Wikipedia Myth

I was under the impression anyone could edit Wikipedia, but the more I use it and dive deeper the more I find, this is not the case at all; anyone can not edit Wikipedia (and have it stick). The article under Meritocracy indicates Wikimedia could be considered to operate under such a principle, which would mean that contributions and contributors with lower levels of merit or without merit are quickly quashed. Therefore, no, everybody can not edit Wikipedia. Dumb monkeys are excluded.

A person in fact has to be a highly skilled Wiki mentality editor to edit Wikipedia; there is a steep learning curve and a whole set of editing rules you have to learn. Most people do not write in the highly self critical, highly rule based neutral style for a newspaper, let alone an encyclopedia.

Wikimedia claims 4,000 editors, yet there are roughly 6 billion people in the world. That is less than .00006% of the world's population. 99.99994% of the rest of the world, yes, could try... but I wonder how many of them are anywhere near qualified by Wiki baseline standards (whatever they are) within such an Editocracy. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.226.11.248 (talk) 12:18, 26 November 2010 (UTC)

While the quality of an edit matters, your statement that not everybody can edit Wikipedia is incorrect. In fact, the only pages people can't edit are those that are protected. Quality does matter on Wikipedia, but if one inserts poor quality material that is still valuable to the encyclopedia, the edit does not get removed; rather, another user or anonymous editor improves its quality. The Utahraptor^Talk/_Contribs 14:47, 26 November 2010 (UTC)

Wikipedia is somewhat unfriendly and biased against 'just anybody'. In one experiment, experienced editors pretended to be newbies and created new articles at their usual standard. A great majority of them were deleted at Articles for Deletion. Also, a user group study on Wikipedia was summed up this way: 'Wikipedia makes me feel stupid'. My experience as a Wikipedian convinces me of these things too. The reasons and mechanismes of this that I have observed through my experience as a Wikipedian are too complex to expound here. Diderot's dreams (talk) 17:44, 26 November 2010 (UTC)

When I was new, the first thing I did was create an article, Stansbury Island. It was poorly done, but it was never taken to AfD; instead, several other users helped me improve the article. But now that you mention it, yes, there are a lot of biased editors here on Wikipedia. I guess it all depends on who you first encounter on Wikipedia. The Utahraptor^Talk/_Contribs 18:30, 26 November 2010 (UTC)

I believe the "experiment" Diderot's dreams is referring to is the controversial WP:NEWT breaching experiment. If so, I would like to point out that the articles were not created to the experienced users' usual standards, but to a standard the users in question judged equivalent to that at which a newbie might write. Some of the articles were intended to seem borderline or outright unsuitable unless scrutinized carefully. The majority of the articles were not deleted or even tagged for deletion. None of the articles that were deleted or tagged were via AfD; all of the tags were CSD tags. If you meant a different experiment, please disregard this. Intelligentsium 23:49, 26 November 2010 (UTC)

Yes it was that experiment:"Newbie treatment at Criteria for speedy deletion". And I have misremembered. Indeed, it was not 'newbie' articles inappropriately deleted, but 'newbie' articles inappropriately nominated for speedy deletion. The quality level of the articles was newbie level.

But the articles were specifically to be written such that they did not qualify for speedy deletion. If the articles were borderline or some trickery was used in regard to the speedy deletion criteria, maybe these sould be ignored. But then again new page patrollers should know what they are doing. Can you explain more about this? Which articles?

There were 63 articles, 52 were patrolled. None of them should have been tagged for speedy deletion, but 23 were, and 5 were actually deleted.

I see one flaw in the experiment. Secrecy is important for the experiment's integrity, and the experiment continued after the Wikipedia Signpost article about it on November 9th. But counting only articles created before then, the results are worse: 21 articles (16 patrolled), 11 tagged CSD, 3 deleted. Diderot's dreams (talk) 17:55, 27 November 2010 (UTC)

Here is the Signpost post on the usability study.[4] Diderot's dreams (talk) 22:30, 27 November 2010 (UTC)

Wikipedia obviously has to have rules about what is acceptable content, and it must have some standards of quality. Obviously too there are styles of writing that are encyclopaedic, and styles that are not. Aiming to follow the rules and match that required style will get you a long way. Perhaps it does exclude those who are unable or unwilling to abide by the rules and to try to match the encyclopaedic style of writing. HiLo48 (talk) 19:41, 26 November 2010 (UTC)

The English Wikipedia has 1,766 administrators as of November 29, 2010. The admins are the de facto authors of Wikipedia. In the end, anything this tiny group of people disagrees with will be deleted or altered to conform to their Weltanschauung. Wasp14 (talk) 15:12, 29 November 2010 (UTC)

Wikipedia is not an "encyclopedia that anyone can edit". Wikipedia is biased based that is based upon the beliefs of a few (Administrators) get to dictate. There have been more then several articles as well as revisions that are instantly deleted if they do not fit the biased beliefs of the administrators. As long as information is plagiarized, um sorry, I mean validated and biased, your entry or edit will be revised to be even more biased. If a view other then what is already determined by the Admin is stated, the article is locked from edit and listed as vandalized. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 67.172.162.156 (talk) 06:49, 24 December 2010 (UTC)

Generally only locked against editing by unregistered editors. Simple solution. Register. HiLo48 (talk) 08:04, 24 December 2010 (UTC)

The Google search for Wikipedia reads "The Encyclopedia anyone can edit" NOT "The Encyclopedia on registered users can edit". There is a BIG difference between the two.

I posted above that a site like this has to have rules. Rules about writing style was the area I was talking about then. It cannot be open slather. But registering certainly gives you more rights. Is there anything stopping you registering? HiLo48 (talk) 08:42, 24 December 2010 (UTC)

Yes. People have realized that it's not worth learning a poorly designed system of templates and tags, arkane procedures, and pathetic weaseling, all just to become an unpaid worker providing source material for the galère to twist--or extinguish. And as for users, many people have caught on that "verifiability not truth" means that there's a lot of self-serving misinformation being set into stone and protected with little icons. Some point this out explicitly, while many people just say, "...you can't trust Wikipedia." —71.203.125.108 (talk) 20:43, 29 November 2010 (UTC)

Of course you can't trust Wikipedia, (DUUUHHHHH !) but it certainly is a great place to start and the best part about Wikipedia is that one can simply click the ref.links to try to get enough information to see the real story.This works for me. Wikipedia is a wonderful resource and adding negative comments doesn't serve much purpose.BrianAlex (talk) 14:55, 11 December 2010 (UTC)

Hey guys, I'm a college student. If we even cite Wikipedia in research papers, we get flunked. There's a reason for it e.g. many times I have googled entire paragraphs as the search term--it returned more than just Wikipedia (sometimes, something even more credible--yes I am saying people on here plagiarize). Wikipedia's only use for academic work I have found is that it serves as a springboard to credible sources of information.216.228.249.43 (talk) 18:36, 21 December 2010 (UTC)

• A quick reminder to you all that, as it says at the top, "this is not a forum for general discussion of the article's subject." "This talk page is exclusively for discussion concerning Wikipedia's article on itself." Jake the Editor Man _(talk)

Question about the counter

How does the counter work? {{NUMBEROFARTICLES}} - does it include the number of disambiguation pages? Is it possible to know the number of disambiguation pages? Thanks —  Ark25  (talk) 07:26, 19 November 2010 (UTC)

Edit request from Andwesseh, 6 December 2010

{{edit semi-protected}} Preston Papie Corporal (born March 9, 1987) is a Liberian player who plays in the Canadian Soccer League for Hamilton Croatia.

Club career

Born in Liberia,Lower Buchanan, Grand Bassa County, Preston a striker, started his professional football career at Liberian club Watanga FC, where he became a key player at the club and won the Liberia Football Association Most Value Player Award in 2003. One year later he made a stint with Liberia premiership club Invincible Eleven (IE). Later that year, he was called up on the Under 20, Liberia National team and made his debut against the Leone Star of Sierra Leone in an International friendly in 2004 and made his latest appearance for the Liberia National Senior team in the 2010 World Cup qualifier against Algeria in 2008.In November 2005 he made his way to the continent of Asia.

After an unsuccesful trial with DPMM of Brunei, he landed in Malaysia and made it with Angkantan Tentera Malaysia (ATM) in the Malaysia M-League.

In his first year, Preston bagged a total of 36 goals in all competitions and help ATM to win two Championships that year. In his second season with ATM, Preston made a short appearance in India with Mohammedan Sporting Fc. A club that was struggling relegation battle in the India top flight league.Searching for a striker who could save Mohammed Sporting Fc season by scoring goals on a regular basis, the scout recommended Preston after hearing about and watching the impressive striker in action , Mohammedan quickly signed him for a 4 months loan.

After ending his 4 Months Contract with Mohammedan Sporting Fc in India, the prolific striker return to Malaysia with his club ATM. After 2 more seaons with ATM he fianlly moved to Jamaica and played for Village United.

Andwesseh (talk) 17:50, 6 December 2010 (UTC)

 Declined This request for a new article belongs on this page, please ask there, but you will be required to provide some reliable sources to establish his notability. Cheers. Rodhullandemu 18:10, 6 December 2010 (UTC)

Edit request from Fernpwns8, 24 December 2010

{{edit semi-protected}} The top of the page is vandalised, you should fully lock it.

Fernpwns8 (talk) 16:47, 24 December 2010 (UTC)

•  Done Thanks. Rodhullandemu 17:02, 24 December 2010 (UTC)

Is wikipedia the largest ad free site in the world?

Researching to see if wikipedia was declining, I found this:http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/blog/2009/nov/25/wikipedia-editors-decline and read this:

"Wow, this is depressing. Guys, it's a fucking FREE encyclopedia. There are thousands of featured articles which are [a] perfect overview (and even in-depth) [with] sources and references of knowledge. The site has been built by anonymous volounteers in their spare time for free, and there isn't a single ad on there. Of course it isn't perfect - it's a human system. Stop hating something that is inherently good."

which was in response to every previous comment which had only negative to say about the project and it made me wonder if wikipedia is the largest ad free site in the world, which I'll bet it is. Daniel Christensen (talk) 08:02, 26 December 2010 (UTC)

It may well be. Maybe archive.org is bigger? --FormerIP (talk) 18:00, 11 January 2011 (UTC)

Put a graph of donations along the years

Why not put a graph of the amount needed in donations along the years? I remember that in the past (some years ago) Wikipedia needed much less in donations than it needs this year (16 million dollars). It would be interesting to put a graph all the values it needed in all these years since its creation. Thanks! (and sorry my bad grammar, but you got the point!) —Preceding unsigned comment added by 189.4.49.112 (talk) 08:19, 31 December 2010 (UTC)

Licensing issues

My original question was what exactly it means when the article describes the GFDL as "not suitable for online reference works" which I changed to say it "was not considered suitable" and added a clarification tag to. On further inspection, this section also needs to use secondary sources rather than pages on Wikimedia's own projects. It's my understanding that there are issues with both using primary sources too much and referencing wiki pages that any person can change. Andreona (talk) 10:53, 2 January 2011 (UTC)

Most viewed articles in 2010

Can anyone figure out what the most viewed articles in 2010 were? I don't think anyone cares about 2009 anymore. – Homestar-winner 03:37, 5 January 2011 (UTC)

Conflict of Interest

I feel that there should be some sort of a warning on this page regarding possible inaccuracies in this specific article; sort of a conflict of interest header template? --Matthew Bauer (talk) 22:55, 6 January 2011 (UTC)

What conflict of interest are you referring to?--71.85.198.96 (talk) 21:59, 11 January 2011 (UTC)

Page contains an error

Shame I can't put it right :( —Preceding unsigned comment added by 81.141.47.162 (talk) 22:41, 14 January 2011 (UTC)

What is the error? Perhaps if you tell us one of us can fix it. Or, you can create an account (free, does not involve giving any more information than a pseudonym and password, and does not require the completion of any surveys, etc.) and fix it yourself (after you have become autoconfirmed, of course). Intelligentsium 22:44, 14 January 2011 (UTC)

Edit request from 67.169.72.25, 15 January 2011

{{edit semi-protected}}

I feel there should be sections regarding general criticisms of Wikipedia, including the issues of difficulty of posting, the lack of user friendliness for editing, and the various concerns of people regarding whether this is good source, even though it has become the main source people use, and the privacy implications for people whose biography are shown as an article. 67.169.72.25 (talk) 11:26, 15 January 2011 (UTC)

There's already an article at Criticism of Wikipedia which mentions all of those issues which is linked to from this page. Mhiji 15:40, 15 January 2011 (UTC)

Agreed! and More, January 17, 2011

I was surprised that there was no section on criticisms in this page, when that is a pretty common feature among others. Generally, this page conveys a strong sense of bias, where every complaint or criticism is met by a rebuttal.

Let me tell you why I came to this page. I started with an objection about editing. I went to a page that purported to explain Wikipedia's dispute resolution process. It was impenetrable. There seemed to be no clear structure, just a piled-up accumulation of possibilities. So then I came here and, lo, this page is even worse. Are all these paragraphs of text really about Wikipedia, in something other than the general sense that the whole world is about Wikipedia? With all the overpolicing of individual articles that goes on in the name of quality control, one would expect to see some sort of editorial discipline here, of all places -- with, specifically, a criticisms section. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Raywood (talk • contribs) 12:13, 17 January 2011 (UTC)

You missed Criticism of Wikipedia? Rehevkor ✉ 12:52, 17 January 2011 (UTC)

Criticism and/or Controversy Section

There is no criticism or controversy section on Wikipedia. Wikipedia shouldn't be biased even to itself. I have probably am not the only one to make this complaint. 216.105.64.140 (talk) 05:33, 19 January 2011 (UTC)

There is a link to the page criticism of wikipedia under the second heading and it is one of the larger articles i have seen. Daftruth (talk) 05:32, 22 January 2011 (UTC)

Hitch-Hikers Guide

I believe that it is time for it to be noted the Wikipedia is basically the hitch hikers guide to the galaxy. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 152.7.49.80 (talk) 21:44, 21 January 2011 (UTC)

That many articles already? But based on what sources? Rehevkor ✉ 22:24, 21 January 2011 (UTC)

Wikipedia:about

The talk page on Wikipedia:about has been protected from editing. Now why would anyone "protect" a talk page? 173.183.66.173 (talk) 22:41, 23 January 2011 (UTC)

"Excessive vandalism" apparently. Rehevkor ✉ 22:50, 23 January 2011 (UTC)

New source: Gender imbalance

This NYT article talks about a gender imbalance on Wikipedia:

• "Where Are the Women in Wikipedia?." The New York Times. February 2, 2011. WhisperToMe (talk) 04:59, 4 February 2011 (UTC)

The article needs some more information

How about information on (1)Number of edits made (2)Number of registered users (3) Number of administratros, stewards etc. or links to pages where such information is available. Yogesh Khandke (talk) 08:22, 5 February 2011 (UTC)

Five pillars of Wikipedia redirected to Wikipedia?

Why on earth is my search-entry Five pillars of Wikipedia redirected here to the overall article on Wikipedia? The aimed for article exists (five pillars of wikipedia) and I wanted to re-view it. I don't know how to change such frustrating redirections. It feels very manipulating. I hope someone may help, thank you. --Xact (talk) 02:19, 7 February 2011 (UTC))

Were you looking for this page? If so, you need to remember to add the Wikipedia: prefix when you do a search on it. The Utahraptor^Talk/_Contribs 02:22, 7 February 2011 (UTC)

Dear raptor from Utah, it is not the mere objective of finding the desired article that caused my frustration, but the semiotic implication. I regard the five pillars of wikipedia very highly. What the significance of these pillars is, are of course opt to continuous consideration and prudent conversation, but they need not to be put in the backyard of this project. --Xact (talk) 03:31, 7 February 2011 (UTC)

Clearly there is no article for Five pillars of Wikipedia here. While the five pillars are significant inside the project, there's no guarantee they'll receive the coverage outside the encyclopedia required to support an article inside the encyclopedia. If you feel this is a problem, then why not create an article yourself? And WP:5 is not the "back yard" of the project, it is, in essence, its very heart. Rehevkor ✉ 03:42, 7 February 2011 (UTC)

Well, The five pillars of Wikipedia is leading to the same place as WP:5, the very heart. I was simply curious of why Five pillars of Wikipedia was redirected as it was. It came, for me, in addition to reading a statement within the article Wikipedia: Neutral point of view, saying that Neutral point of view is one of Wikipedia's three core content policies. I may be too cautious, but I simply want to be protective this heart of Wikipedia. --Xact (talk) 06:09, 7 February 2011 (UTC)

The redirect was changed because it's a cross-namespace redirect, which is discouraged. See Wikipedia:Redirects for discussion/Log/2010 June 16 for the discussion that lead to this redirect being changed. Rather than send you to a policy page from mainspace, it now leads to a more encyclopedic destination. If you want access to policies and other meta material, make sure to include the Wikipedia: namespace prefix. As for the redirect that starts with "The", it wasn't included in that discussion. But I think the same decision should apply to that one, for consistency. Reach Out to the Truth 06:25, 7 February 2011 (UTC)

Neutrality versus Objectivity

This question is regarding a peculiar discussion at Wikipedia:Norway. In Norwegian we have the word for both 'neutral' (nøytral) and objective (objektiv), still the Objective is preferred for Neutral in the translation. I intuit this as pertaining to a policy, which challenges the original neutrality policy of wikipedia. Also neutrality has a political colour, so to say, in Norway, cause this is traditionally associated with the Swedish political mainstream ideal. This may be a cause for the situation in Norway.. Nevertheless I find the Norwegian translation of this pillar very problematic. Objectivity is quite another ideal from neutral point of view. Objectivity is far more conservative in relation to established order and authority, than what is neutrality. The neutral is a possible ground within a process, wheras objectivity relates to an hypothetical end-product. The Wikipedia will never result in a publishable encyclopedia (an object). It will constantly be in a dynamic process. Wikipedians should not, I think, regard Wikipedia as inferior to an Encyclopedia. It will stay as something else, and it will continune to influence the way we (including the academic community) are thinking in terms of methodology. Theory is a practice in this new paradigm. Wikipedia is far ahead of the encyclopedias in disclosing this binarism (Theory & Practice). Still I'm somehow afraid of the conflict on Wikipedia:Norway. I hope it is not symptomatic. There's obvious efforts to sort of tame Wikipedia in regard of its seminal influence. I think it is an strategic error to present Wikipedia as the free encyclopedia, cause it signals an upper limit in reference to the very much better, but not so cheap encyclopedias like Encyclopedia Britannica. On the other hand Wikipedia is a better wikipedia than any of the other efforts from the encyclopedic publishers to encounter the challenge. I wonder what the opinions are at this English section about the Norwegian case? --Xact (talk) 03:31, 7 February 2011 (UTC)

Operation : Software & hardware

Can those in the know add an overview, either under this sub-section or in a new sub-section, of the software technologies and techniques used on Wikipedia? For example, we've been told that javascript is used by "gadget" developers; the (new?) GeoIP servers are used to customize how pages are delivered (and maybe for load balancing?); CSS and templates are used to format the pages. By putting it here, hopefully it would also be kept up-to-date. (There doesn't seem to be anything like this in the Technical Village Pump, and I don't know where else to look). Metafax1 (talk) 03:59, 13 February 2011 (UTC)

Accusation of a liberal far left slant in articles in general.

This would be under a separate heading. Wikipedia does not take a journalistic approach to things. given examples. evolution is presented as a fact, where anything contrary to it is a myth. this abounds in many of the articles referring to a supernatural belief. they seem to give a point of view of the leftest, stating science as proven fact and religion as crazy people. when in fact, scientific FACT keeps changing. up until the last year we all came from Africa 200,000 years ago. it was not questioned, it was a fact. well the fact has changed now to represent we came from Israel region 400,000 years ago. the skew points left, to articles being written, edited, and moderated by those with little to no belief in any type of God; or a belief that they themselves are God. the BC AD, BCE CE debate is another great example. we work on a calender that was based on an approximate year of the birth of Jesus of Nazareth. Therefor BC and AD are appropriate when referring to anything before the year 1BC and after the year 1AD. BCE and CE cannot be used, and are not interchangeable in this dating system. by all means, one can use what ever calendar they choose. however we are in the year 2011AD. 2011 years after the estimate of Jesus' birth.

so i believe there should be an entry on the Wikipedia wiki, listing a criticism of a leftist editing base, and an explanation of the reasoning.

http://www.conservapedia.com/Examples_of_Bias_in_Wikipedia Scoobydoo4ever (talk) 14:37, 15 February 2011 (UTC)

Accusing Wikipedia of bias then citing conservapedia doesn't really give you a strong case. Rehevkor ✉ 14:24, 15 February 2011 (UTC)

p.s. Reliability of Wikipedia#Liberal bias. Rehevkor ✉ 14:26, 15 February 2011 (UTC)

I might have re-posted all of the reasoning they have here as a C&P but do not see that as necessary.

On the second point Reliability of Wikipedia#Liberal bias this should be a separate section on the main Wikipedia wiki. Scoobydoo4ever (talk) 14:37, 15 February 2011 (UTC)

Why should that be in the main article and not the rest? Reach Out to the Truth 14:52, 15 February 2011 (UTC)

Given the allegations of bias, I was going to be rude and point out the American bias in the OP's question, liberal being a generally positive and complimentary word in most of the world outside the USA, but felt that it's better to educate than criticise. The other area for our IP's education is the nature of science. Of course what science knows keeps changing. It's a matter of always seeking better explanations. To believe that all is explained in an unchanging dogma from thousands of years ago takes a faith that many of us cannot find. I suspect our OP is happy to accept the newer findings of medical science. Now, as for calling it leftist... That criticism I cannot comprehend. HiLo48 (talk) 19:22, 22 February 2011 (UTC)

Bad illustration

[5] This is a bad illustration and should be removed. Please revert. The picture is of a sporting event crowd, not a Wikipedia crowd. It is also not an illustration of crowdsourcing. IvoryMeerkat (talk) 18:48, 22 February 2011 (UTC)

Truth by consensus

Can someone create a section on "truth by consensus"? Wikipedia is "truth by consensus". —Preceding unsigned comment added by 70.106.142.145 (talk) 17:09, 23 February 2011 (UTC)

What do you think such a section should contain? HiLo48 (talk) 17:32, 23 February 2011 (UTC)

This diff [6] might help answer your question. Dougweller (talk) 18:55, 23 February 2011 (UTC)

Wikipedia isn't truth by consensus, it's truth by consensus of what the notable sources are.Rememberway (talk) 22:19, 23 February 2011 (UTC)

This opinion (that Wikipedia is truth by consensus) is already covered in two places: Community of Wikipedia#Consensus and the "hive mind" and Wikipedia in culture#Wikiality There isn't room for all Wikipedia-related issues to be discussed in the Wikipedia article. -- JTSchreiber (talk) 01:00, 24 February 2011 (UTC)

Self-Promotion

Boy if this article isn't self-promoting I don't know what is. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Biophily (talk • contribs) 05:50, 24 February 2011 (UTC)

Boy if that comment isn't pointless, I don't know what is. Exactly what problems do you see? What WOULD you like to see? Do try to be a little more constructive please. HiLo48 (talk) 06:41, 24 February 2011 (UTC)

WP:SELF --Highspeedrailguy (talk) 20:07, 25 February 2011 (UTC)

WP:WAWI. WP:SELF is concerned with writing style. --Cybercobra (talk) 21:57, 25 February 2011 (UTC)

Exactly, the Wikipedia article meets all of the content guidelines so there is no reason that there should not be an article. It has also been mentioned in the past that other enclolypedias have articles about Wikipedia and themselves so there is no reason that it should be any different here.--76.66.189.59 (talk) 22:17, 8 March 2011 (UTC)

Better illustration

Considering how much images help summarize sections and engage our more visual audience, I think a decent illustration is better than nothing. Now in the reliability section I have found a large crowd on computers, with possibly some literal Wikipedians- an even better illustration than was ever really mandatory I think. -Tesseract²(talk) 15:17, 1 March 2011 (UTC)

"Wikipedia as Imago Mundi"

That is the title of a really interesting article by Alex Mueller, published in Studies in Medieval and Renaissance Teaching 17.2 (2010): 11-25. Besides discussing some aspects of the use of Wikipedia in the classroom (though he discusses only students' use--as if professors don't use it to prepare lectures!), Mueller argues that the basics of the Wikipedia project are not so different from medieval encyclopedia building, in which often consecutive versions of encyclopedias were improved, edited, changed, etc. Like Wikipedia (and he cites this edit), "the medieval encyclopedia was a product of collaboration, whose authority rested in the hands of the most recent community of users" (14). He compares the Wiki model to a palimpsest, for instance, and his thesis is worth citing: "I want to argue that a conception of Wikipedia as a postmodern manifestation of the premodern encyclopedia will help scholars and teachers to maximize the usefulness of this provocative resource" (11).

Anyway, to the point: I can't rightly find where to add this to the present article, which has no section that I can see that discusses the philosophical and epistemological qualities and characteristics of our project. Any ideas? Thanks, Dr Aaij (talk) 20:34, 2 March 2011 (UTC)

Sister projects

This article currently identifies the following as "sister projects" of Wikipedia:

• Wiktionary
• Wikiquote
• Wikibooks

It also refers to "other projects" run by Wikimedia, and names only one:

• Wikiversity

Why is this "other project" not considered a "sister project"? Is Wikisource a "sister project" or an "other project" or something else? Should it also be mentioned in that paragraph? Is there a complete list of "sister projects" and "other projects" run by Wikimedia? Michael Hardy (talk) 21:35, 11 March 2011 (UTC)

Facts

What about many school teachers hating this site for being notoriously inaccurate?--ILuvTomservo3Alt (talk) 01:57, 12 March 2011 (UTC)

Is THAT a fact? HiLo48 (talk) 02:08, 12 March 2011 (UTC)

ILuvTomservo3Alt, do you have any reliable sources describing high school teachers' opinions of Wikipedia? If so, I can look at putting something about this into the Reliability of Wikipedia article. That is the article which contains the details of Wikipedia's accuracy or lack thereof. -- JTSchreiber (talk) 05:38, 12 March 2011 (UTC)

wikipedia has deleted my friends article which explains how wikipedia is against freedom of the press which is a natural human right as stated in the constitution. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Freedomofspeech20 (talk • contribs) 23:18, 19 March 2011 (UTC)

Whose constitution? The mere fact that you make such an insular, probably US-centric comment suggests you need to find out a lot more about Wikipedia. HiLo48 (talk) 23:50, 19 March 2011 (UTC)

Accusation of Koch Brothers Manipulation

There is an article by Thom Hartman alleging that the Koch brothers have hired a PR firm to rework many Wikipedia entries to not only be more favorable to their client but to also remove favorable information about any liberal group. http://www.thomhartmann.com/forum/2011/03/are-koch-brothers-rewriting-wikipedia75.71.40.251 (talk) 07:55, 12 March 2011 (UTC)

No, that's not what the article says. In particular, it doesn't mention "liberal groups". As someone from Australia, where the word "liberal" has two distinct meanings, both very different to that used in America, I am very sensitive to use of that word. I know nothing of the Koch brothers, but surely we can use good sources to keep the article "clean". Use the sources, but do it better than that post above. HiLo48 (talk) 10:07, 12 March 2011 (UTC)

Just a forum post, so I'm not sure what use it is to post here. Perhaps WP:AN would be the best place to bring this up. Rehevkor ✉ 13:43, 12 March 2011 (UTC)

Decline in articles

I don't mean to be a statistics geek, but has the total number of articles, like displayed on the front page (wikipedia.org not just en.wiki.x.io) ever gone down? Has deletion ever outweighed creation? In any of the languages? Because I swear there should be more than three and a half million English articles. It seems like there'd be more in some other languages, too, because they're all a mess and less stuff gets deleted. Daniel Christensen (talk) 22:44, 20 March 2011 (UTC)

• Nevermind: http://en.wiki.x.io/wiki/File:EnwikipediaGom.PNG Daniel Christensen (talk) 22:58, 20 March 2011 (UTC)

Why do all those templates have to go below the refs, external links, etc? and always be collapsed?

A lot of big pages have good templates located at the bottom, all the way down, below the external links, where no one sees them. Also, tthey are always collapsed by default.

Here's a page: List of tallest buildings in Miami, that has some good templates at the bottom, but no one goes down that far, past all those [shotty] references.

I know that on some of "my" articles I have placed those templates higher, but it doesn't look right.

I got it, they should have their own section, and not look like they're in the bloody external links section, perhaps a "templates" section. I'll try it out Daniel Christensen (talk) 06:14, 21 March 2011 (UTC)

Oh yeah, I moved the templates to the see also section, and they are much better there. That is where they all should be moved and should be put from now on. See List of tallest buildings in Miami#See also. Daniel Christensen (talk) 06:49, 21 March 2011 (UTC)

I see it was a bad idea using an article I've contributed a lot to as an example, as it, instead of getting a response here, attracted someone to not only revert the template move, but to change formatting and dates which were correct, probably just trying to revert my last few edits, not seeing I am the one who corrected and turned that once out of date article around. Daniel Christensen (talk) 07:30, 21 March 2011 (UTC)

For example, a correct date changed back to a wrong date and a language removed. In short, random reversions of my recent edits out of the presumption of falsehood. Who cares that a month ago the whole article was worded for 2008 when it was finished and never updated. Daniel Christensen (talk) 07:42, 21 March 2011 (UTC)

You think you have pages mixed up, this talk page is about the article on Wikipedia about Wikipedia, not for asking for clarification or help etc. Wikipedia:Help desk‎ may be of more help. But to answer your question briefly, that's just were they go, see WP:FOOTERS and WP:NAVBOX. They're navigational aids and the bottom of the page is the logical place for them to go, per consensus. I refer any further questions to any of the guidelines or noticeboards I have linked you too. Rehevkor ✉ 16:29, 21 March 2011 (UTC)

"Reference work"

Shouldn't we be a "reference work" and not an encyclopedia. We really are a gazetteer and a traditional encyclopedia and an almanac combined. --Richard Arthur Norton (1958- ) (talk) 19:00, 25 March 2011 (UTC)

Conflict of Interest

Shouldn't Wikipedia's rules require this article to be deleted? Everyone who wrote it is a contributor to Wikipedia. 66.81.223.210 (talk) 02:32, 1 April 2011 (UTC)

This comment consitutes gaming the system. No, this article is not COI and is neutral.Jasper Deng (talk) 02:33, 1 April 2011 (UTC)

Also the Conflict of Interest page states Conflict of interest is not a reason to delete an article, though other problems with the article arising from a conflict of interest may be valid criteria for deletion. So even if we did have a Conflict of Interest that itself would not be enough of a reason to delete an article as long as the page meets our other policies and guidelines as this page does.--76.66.187.132 (talk) 03:32, 6 April 2011 (UTC)

Graph of the article count is old, needs to be replaced with a newer one.

Please replace "Graph of the article count for the English Wikipedia, from January 10, 2001, to September 9, 2007 (the date of the two-millionth article)." with one that goes up to the present. 71.109.163.149 (talk) 00:33, 6 April 2011 (UTC)

Snagging

Snagging is a form of fishing the diffence is that you do not use bait or lures istand you use empty hookes and a lead sinker you cast out into the water and ral your line in jerking as you real —Preceding unsigned comment added by 76.7.6.224 (talk) 18:51, 13 April 2011 (UTC)

Archives missing

The archives list at the top list 18 archives but the archives on the left only go to archive 13. Could someone with more knowledge on how to fix this, please fix it. 86.162.146.176 (talk) 19:16, 15 April 2011 (UTC)

What makes Wikipedia unique

So to say all other Encyclopedia articles and scientific texts, in publications, magazines and so on, except for Wikipedia, is marked by individual contributors adding their signature, both in the narrow sense of signalling the author and in the broader pertaining to the metaphysic dimension of poetics. The unnavoidable biased elements of any autorship are sort of tamed by the signature, the person, and broader context of the publishing. With Wikipedia this is not the case. The signature-elements of any wikipedia-article are myriadic, complex and pretty impossible to trace. Because of this lack, I think, Wikipedia would benefit from enhancing modest and open forms of making statements. For instant, the Mohammad article was earlier less modest and open in its opening statement: Mohammad is the founder of the religion of Islam. Now, it seems, an editing war has ended. The more modest and open phrase: Mohammad is regarded the founder of the religion of Islam. has become the preferred statement. I believe such language need to be stimulated, because of the absence of signatories. A model author is appearing in the imaginary field. I don't think it is stupid to be aware of this imaginary speaker/writer when writing. In matter of fact, I think it is important to try too "see" if the character of the model author (the imagined author a reader relates to) is male/female, oriental/occidental, old/young and so on. I believe most articles in English is read having predominantly male white personas. Not because of the real or empirical bias of the myriad of editors, but as result of analyzing the use of language codes hinting to characteristics of authorship. --Xact (talk) 18:44, 22 April 2011 (UTC)

I think this is beyond the scope of this talk page, which is really just for discussing improvements to this article, not Wikipedia as a whole. Perhaps you could try the Village Pump. Rehevkor ✉ 19:47, 22 April 2011 (UTC)

Reliability

I am sorry, but please do allow me to use my First amendment rights here: I have a really hard time not chuckling at the reliability section here. It states:

• People known to use Wikipedia as a reference source include film critic Roger Ebert, comedian Rosie O'Donnell and University of Maryland physicist Robert L. Park.

If we can name only three people here (one of them a comedian) then we have already lost the reliability debate. This just reads like a joke. Just three people? And one of them is a comedian? Did she write this joke?

Another issue is that it is unclear if we can even believe what Wikipedia says about itself elsewhere. The page for Bradley E. Schaefer says:

• Schaefer is known by students to repeatedly discredit the accuracy of Wikipedia and Google in class and in assignments.

Is that even true? At the moment, it is unreferenced folklore added by an unknown IP. I have no idea if it is true. But overall, I think while we are all busy giving barnstars to each other many people in universities are laughing. That should change - and stopping the flow of junk IP articles and imposing more quality measures on article edits, avoiding spam, and attracting more experts to Wikipedia will be essential.

There are many articles in Wikipedia. What is needed is improving content reliability by attracting and maintaining experts. (Yes, I do know about the mistakes made at Citizendum, but that is a different story.) The first decade of Wikipedia was just a start. In the second decade, Wikipedia needs to get serious and focus on reliability. And that will require a change of attitude. But that must start if the jokes are to end. When the jokes end, we know reliability is within reach.

I am sorry, but I think the reliability section here is just not credible. History2007 (talk) 18:54, 28 April 2011 (UTC)

How about software that detects when an assertion is made and then blocks publishing it unless it is accompanied by a proper citation? Google already scans websites for SEO and knows how to tell assertions from other types of written speech. Why isn't Wikipedia using this technology? 74.205.144.180 (talk) 19:59, 30 April 2011 (UTC)

Google has a few more dollars (millions and zillions) in their development budget than Wikipedia, which is mostly managed by unpaid people. There are a number of Wiki-software items such as ClueBot that do clever things, but they are typically developed by part time programmers, each on his own, and there is no "large project" AI research at Wikipedia. Yet, I must say that the collection of the many "one man armies" that constitute the Wiki-bots does produce impressive results. However, in time Wiki-technology will improve if conversations can start between these people. Yet the real barrier there will be the usual: clever programmers often do things best on their own and large tech-teams at Wikipedia without a formal management structure may not be immediate. However, so far the one man armies have done Ok, although there is significant room for further improvement. History2007 (talk) 20:13, 30 April 2011 (UTC)

The people-known-to-use-Wikipedia sentence was a very recent addition. I agree that it is weak and so I have deleted the sentence. The rest of what History2007 and 74.205.144.180 have written should not be on this page per WP:TALK. This page is for discussing improvements to this article, not your personal opinions of Wikipedia or how the Wikipedia processes can be improved. Ideas for improving the Bradley E. Schaefer article should be posted on that article's talk page. -- JTSchreiber (talk) 05:00, 1 May 2011 (UTC)

Actually that sentence was referenced, and not weak, but was "embarrassing" to me as a Wikipedia editor. The way to ask that so it improves the article is: "Are there any serious people who are known to use Wikipedia, say Nobel laureates, etc.?" And I guess the answer will be: "not that we know of". In fairness, my goal (driven by my desire for less shaky content) was to start a process of improvement to make people pay more attention to reliability. As is, the status quo seems to be that "all is fine" - and that is reflected within this article. In fact all is not fine. There are huge reliability gaps and that section is not a reflection of reality. I guess those who read this page are now aware of this, and you can delete this embarrassing talk page section (would like a barn star?) but the problem will not go away by just exiling the Schaefer problem to his own page. The way Wikipedia will get better and will have Nobel laureates using it in 2021 is by having the reality represented within this page, rather than keeping this page an "all is fine" PR-type article. However, a section with the simple "Are there any serious people who are known to use Wikipedia, say Nobel laureates, etc. that can be included in this page?" would then be appropriate here so the situation with respect to that section can be clarified. History2007 (talk) 09:14, 1 May 2011 (UTC)

Please assume good faith rather than immediately implying that I might be in this for a barn star. The people-known-to-use-Wikipedia sentence is now in the Reliability of Wikipedia article, which is a more appropriate place, although the sentence is still problematic. The goal of trying to improve content reliability is a good one, but, again, this is not the place to rally support for that goal. Please stop now. If you think that the Wikipedia's coverage of itself is "PR-type", then why not put some work into improving this coverage? I suggest starting with the Reliability of Wikipedia article, especially its lead section. Once that section is improved, the changes can be merged into the Wikipedia article. -- JTSchreiber (talk) 05:12, 3 May 2011 (UTC)

I was not implying that you were looking for a barnstar - and I have never given a barnstar, ever. Above that I had joked that everyone is too busy giving barnstars to each other to worry about reliability. So I joked about that again. And my general feeling is that it would be great if everyone stopped giving barnstars until all reliability problems have been addressed. By the way, I do not think the entire article is PR-like - I was just unhappy with that specific Comedian-user quote and also thought (and still think) the reliability issues need more prominence. As for fixes, I just built two pages for two of the tools that check Wikipedia reliability, and as is Wiki-Watch is not even mentioned here - maybe it should be added later. So over the next year I will address these issues in several articles and write a few more on this topic probably. Reliability is a long term goal and is not achieved in 2 weeks. So wait a year then see how things have shaped up. History2007 (talk) 07:55, 3 May 2011 (UTC)

Hey, there is spam. reference 232 brought me to a completely unrelated site. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.136.60.148 (talk) 22:31, 7 May 2011 (UTC)

Goethe quotation

I've just removed the following from the section on editing:

Here, as in other human endeavours, it is evident that the active attention of many, when concentrated on one point, produces excellence.

— Goethe, The Experiment as Mediator between Subject and Object, 1772

"Here" was of course not referring to Wikipedia. Such an inclusion seems highly biased towards the idea that the whole Wikipedia project produces excellence. If this quotation has inspired or guided the founders or developers of Wikipedia (and why wouldn't it?) then that should be cited and included as part of the article. If not, it shouldn't be there. Opera hat (talk) 22:36, 8 May 2011 (UTC)

Sentence on Articles Containing Errors Contains an Error

"This means that an article may contain contain errors, misguided contributions, advocacy, or even patent nonsense."

I suppose this sentence is proof that this sentence is true? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Stoater P (talk • contribs) 04:06, 29 May 2011 (UTC)

Thanks. I removed the duplicated duplicated word. -- JTSchreiber (talk) 05:02, 29 May 2011 (UTC)

Thanks. Thanks. Stoater P (talk) 18:56, 30 May 2011 (UTC)

Illistrations

It would be worth having at least a small section on Wikipedia's logo and branding. --Dweller (talk) 12:46, 11 May 2011 (UTC)

--Sorry I'm so new to this. I think it would be better to qualify the logo's caption using the word "several" or "various." I'm not sure it's accurate to say the logo includes glyphs from "many" different forms of writing. Wishelephant (talk) 03:42, 20 July 2011 (UTC)Wishelephant

Who draws the logos and everything for this stuff? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Jubblybubblyboy (talk • contribs) 18:44, 21 July 2011 (UTC)

Edit request from 122.168.157.244, 8 June 2011

122.168.157.244 (talk) 13:34, 8 June 2011 (UTC)

You've initiated the procedure for requesting an edit, but haven't stated what edit you'd like made. I've closed this request, but you're welcome to reactivate it and request an edit. Adrian J. Hunter^{(talk•contribs)} 16:13, 8 June 2011 (UTC)

Likely troll. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 66.108.76.50 (talk) 17:01, 16 July 2011 (UTC)

New York Times compares volunteers who worked on the original Oxford English Dictionary to "Wikipedians"

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/11/magazine/11wwln-medium-t.html?_r=1&oref=slogin

Let’s go back. As lexicography geeks know well, Oxford’s magnum opus appeared in 10 volumes in 1928, after some 70 years of work by generations of editors and about 2,000 volunteers. (The volunteers displayed much the same gratis fanaticism of today’s Wikipedians.) A supplement with new words appeared in 1933, with additional supplements showing up at regular intervals between 1972 and 1986; in 1989 the whole dictionary was published anew in 20 volumes that collated the ’33 edition and its supplements. Since virtually the day that that last biggie was published, Oxford University Press has been overhauling and revising entries in the dictionary and adding many more. (Oh, “mullet,” “carbo-load,” “six-pack,” “hazmat,” “pole dancing,” “doh!” — what would we do without you?) — Preceding unsigned comment added by 67.248.238.172 (talk) 16:14, 25 June 2011 (UTC)

speedy deletion

I don't understand why Wikipedia has an article about itself. Would an encyclopedia have an article about itself? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 75.1.139.211 (talk) 22:01, 22 July 2011 (UTC)

Wikipedia is notable by Wikipedia's standards, this is why it has an article. I cannot speak for other encyclopaedias, but Wikipedia is fairly unique in its scope. Rehevkor ✉ 22:32, 22 July 2011 (UTC)

[7] Hot Stop talk-contribs 13:19, 23 July 2011 (UTC)

In addition, we do have articles on other notable encyclopedias, so we are not biased. Cbrittain10 (talk) 23:07, 23 July 2011 (UTC)

Also [8] to show that even the mainstream encyclopedias have articles about us. If Britannica has an article about Wikipeida and itself I don't see why Wikipedia can't. In short, a deletion attempt will not even be close to being successful and would likely be closed early due to strong lack of support for deletion and there is little to no chance of speedy deletion be granted.--76.66.188.209 (talk) 05:46, 26 July 2011 (UTC)

Please observe the template heading this article - it clarifies that we should have an article about Wikipedia. ACEOREVIVED (talk) 20:55, 28 July 2011 (UTC)

Section Moves

The entire sections of Sexual Content and Plagiarism could be moved into Criticisms of Wikipedia, what do you think? Cbrittain10 (talk) —Preceding undated comment added 23:17, 23 July 2011 (UTC).

Criticism of Wikipedia is currently a disambiguation page, not an article, so content cannot be moved there. Are you proposing that Criticism of Wikipedia be converted back into an article? -- JTSchreiber (talk) 05:26, 25 July 2011 (UTC)

Automatic Bot archiving

this talk page is pretty active, may I set up automatic archiving of this page?

{{User:MiszaBot/config | algo = old(7d) | archive = User talk:Example/Archives/%(year)d/%(monthname)s }}

Cbrittain10 (talk) 01:13, 24 July 2011 (UTC)

remove pronounciation sound clip

I propose the removal of the pronunciation sound clip in the first sentence of the article, Wikipedia. You can barely hear "Wikipedia" being said. Just listen to it yourself here. Do you Support or Oppose? --QUICK EDITOR 22:14, 28 July 2011 (UTC)

Unnecessary negative emphasis?

The lead section says "Its 19 million articles (over 3.7 million in English) have been written collaboratively by volunteers around the world, and almost all of its articles can be edited by anyone with access to the site, but has only about 90,000 active contributors."

Apart from the grammatical problems with this sentence, does anyone else think that "but has only..." is unnecessarily negative? Isn't 90,000 quite a lot? Can't we reasonably say "Almost all of its articles can be edited by anyone with access to the site, and it has about 90,000 active contributors." 86.160.84.219 (talk) 03:30, 6 August 2011 (UTC)

Yes. (I prefer simple expression where it tells the whole story anyway.) HiLo48 (talk) 03:36, 6 August 2011 (UTC)

It would be good to make that more neutral. Do you or HiLo48 have a proposed wording? -- JTSchreiber (talk) 05:20, 6 August 2011 (UTC)

My proposed wording is above. Note also that the sentence is currently structurally flawed. The word "it" could be inserted before "has", but I suggest that it's better to start a new sentence at "Almost". 81.159.105.227 (talk) 13:27, 6 August 2011 (UTC)

I agree HiLo48 (talk) 00:06, 7 August 2011 (UTC)

Sorry I missed that. It looks good. -- JTSchreiber (talk) 05:00, 7 August 2011 (UTC)

Well, if everyone's agreed, could someone who has permission to edit the page possibly make that change? 86.160.82.204 (talk) 13:33, 10 August 2011 (UTC)

Done. -- JTSchreiber (talk) 05:32, 12 August 2011 (UTC)

Isn't this article a COI?

Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't Wikipedia having an article about itself a COI? Osarius : T : C : Been CSD'd? 17:50, 13 August 2011 (UTC)

Only individual editors can have a conflict of interest. Do you know of anyone who has a financial interest in Wikipedia who has been editing this article? — Satori Son 03:51, 14 August 2011 (UTC)

Of course everyone editing the article will have at least a faint apparent COI - they are a volunteer with the subject of the article. So what? The same can be said of the articles for "Computers" (as all editors are using a computer or computer-like device to contribute), the "Internet" (as all editors presumably contribute via the internet), or even "Humans" (as all editors are, presumably, human). --Philosopher ^{Let us reason together.} 00:55, 23 August 2011 (UTC)

The article on Earth was nominated for deletion because everyone had a conflict of interest and all the sources used were primary sources. hare j 06:14, 23 August 2011 (UTC)

Awesome. But I'd imagine the date might have been significant. (Love the close comment.."you're late" :) -Pete (talk) 07:00, 23 August 2011 (UTC)

Bias

Removing bias from the article entitled Wikipedia

There seems to be something of a bias in this article. Not enormously surprisingly, criticisms of Wikipedia seem to be down-played, and nothing negative is said without the flip-side stated ASAP. Yes, fair to a degree, but it is as though any criticism absolutely must be negated. The article reads to me as a retort to anyone who has something bad to say about Wikipedia and, let's face it, a little like propaganda. Gingermint (talk) 01:01, 17 August 2011 (UTC)

By the way, I am a huge Wikipedia fan. Gingermint (talk) 01:02, 17 August 2011 (UTC)

Can you give any examples of what you consider to be biased in the article, it would make it a lot easier to address your concerns if we had a better idea about what aspects of the article you think need to be changed.--76.66.180.220 (talk) 04:14, 18 August 2011 (UTC)

Any criticism should show both sides in order to be neutral. But yes, specific examples would be useful. Яehevkor ✉ 09:06, 18 August 2011 (UTC)

Really? In honesty, I feel Wikipedia is being too hard on itself. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.40.27.116 (talk) 15:05, 29 August 2011 (UTC)

Documenting accusations of bias about articles in general

Three examples came up by quickly Googling the subject (regarding bias on Wikipedia in general):

1. In the article on George W. Bush on PBS;
2. An issue that required the intervention of none other than Jimbo Wales himself on The Daily Telegraph, backed up by the relevant article talk page;
3. Pro-terrorist organizations and generally anti-Israel on Haaretz.

I am certain that more WP:RS can be found that make similar accusations, doesn't that merit a small "accusations of bias" section? Hearfourmewesique (talk) 02:07, 8 September 2011 (UTC)

A new section should not be added to the Wikipedia article, because accusations of bias are already covered in the daughter article Reliability of Wikipedia. There's room for expanding Reliability of Wikipedia if the material is properly sourced. Note that, due to the structure of the article, the discussion of bias is split between the Assessments and Notable incidents sections. -- JTSchreiber (talk) 05:38, 8 September 2011 (UTC)

See, therein lies the problem: by omitting the section from the main article, the reader gets the wrongful perception that there is little to no controversy, as people normally read the main article to get acquired with the subject matter while mostly not even getting to Reliability of Wikipedia. As per WP:NPOV, we should create a section with {{main}} linking to the daughter article. Hearfourmewesique (talk) 06:06, 8 September 2011 (UTC)

What about Wikipedia#Reliability? Яehevkor ✉ 17:36, 8 September 2011 (UTC)

It's a subheading, which could be followed by the "Accusations of bias" subheading. Hearfourmewesique (talk) 22:10, 8 September 2011 (UTC)

The pie chart should be replaced

The pie chart is from 2008, which by internet standards is completely archaic, not to mention the millions of article that have been written in this time. Can somebody make a more relevant pie chart or find one that is more up to date.

Kobbra (talk) 09:26, 31 August 2011 (UTC)

How to add categories to an article?

This is probably the wrong place to put this, but how do you add categories to an article? I can't figure it out. SailorSonic

Worit tot wow ws File:56648968.jpgӄ — Preceding unsigned comment added by 93.115.73.221 (talk) 18:24, 9 September 2011 (UTC)

Editing Request

I am requesting the addition of some text at the top in case someone enters the wrong title. It would say:

This is the article on Wikipedia itself. You may be looking for the Main Page.

Something like that. It can be modified in any way.

Multi Trixes! (Talk - Me on Wikia) 18:37, 9 September 2011 (UTC)

 Not done The link to Wikipedia:About is already sufficient, per WP:SRTA self references should be avoided. Яehevkor ✉ 18:45, 9 September 2011 (UTC)

Self-referential links

There are several cross-namespace links in the body of this article - one to Wikipedia:Size of Wikipedia in the lead, and some to WP:V and WP:NPOV later on (using {{srlink}}). These should probably be removed, and replaced with citations using external links. — This, that, and the other (talk) 01:23, 10 September 2011 (UTC)

Paragraph beginning: "Though the English Wikipedia"

Rather than being bold & immediately changing this paragraph, I'm setting out here what I as needing to be changed.

"Though the English Wikipedia reached three million articles in August 2009, the growth of the edition, in terms of the numbers of articles and of contributors, appeared to have flattened off around early 2007."

The graph adjacent to the sentence shows the number of articles growing very rapidly around 2007. A non-mathematically sophisticated reader is likely to miss the inflection point and think the graph contradicts the sentence. Perhaps a graph of growth rate could be added.

"appeared to have flattened off" - weasely.

"In 2006, about 1,800 articles were added daily to the encyclopedia; by 2010 that average was roughly 1,000.[39] A team at the Palo Alto Research Center speculated that this is due to the increasing exclusiveness of the project.[40] New or occasional editors have significantly higher rates of their edits reverted (removed) than an elite group of regular editors, colloquially known as the "cabal." This could make it more difficult for the project to recruit and retain new contributors over the long term, resulting in stagnation in article creation. Others suggest that the growth is flattening naturally because the low-hanging fruit already exist.[41][42]

Why say "roughly"? Is the average number of articles added daily not available for 2010?

"New or occasional editors have significantly higher rates of their edits reverted." Is this a statement of fact or a speculation from Palo Alto? And is "increasing exclusiveness" demonstrable or a Palo Alto opinion?

"than an elite group of regular editors" ?? Saying "than regular editors" or perhaps "than experienced editors" is clearer. Why characterize them as "elite"?

"colloquially known as the "cabal." Known to whom as the "cabal"? I have edited here for quite a while without seeing the term used. Perhaps the term "cabal" is actually used by some "insiders", but it does not improve the sentence to say so. It distracts from the main point.

"Colloquially"? Calling the regular editors "the boys in the back" or "Jimmy's kids" might be considered colloquial but calling them the "cabal" is not colloquial IMO.

"because the low-hanging fruit already exist" Now I think that is colloquial.

I hope this is useful comment. Wanderer57 (talk) 13:20, 23 September 2011 (UTC)

Article is getting fairly low quality scores

This article probably should be FA quality, but we're getting moderately low scores by the readers.

I read some of the subarticles, like criticism of Wikipedia, and they read a lot better.

I think the reason is because the main article is too summarised, the Wikipedia is um... a big thing... and so trying to get it down to 50k of readable text is too big an ask. The size tool gives:

Prose size (text only): 56 kB (8883 words) "readable prose size"

My feel is that it should be at least 50-100% bigger than that.

Anyway that's my theory, does anyone else have any other idea of why the article isn't considered better? How can it be improved?Teapeat (talk) 21:53, 30 September 2011 (UTC)

I don't think that a signficant increase in article size is a good idea. According to the rule of thumb at WP:SIZERULE, a readable prose size of 56 K means the article may need to be split. Also, the readers have given the article a higher rating for completeness than for objectivity. These ratings indicate that editors should improve the neutrality, rather than add more material. -- JTSchreiber (talk) 05:26, 3 October 2011 (UTC)

SIZERULE is only a procrustean rule of thumb though, and contrary to what you say, for where this article needs to be, the ratings are across-the-board really pretty bad; the raters just don't like the article. Whereas for example: criticism of Wikipedia is getting almost top marks. The article needs to be as big as it needs to be, no smaller, and no bigger, my sense is that it's too small, and hence it ends up sort of facile. It's really a bigger topic than this.Teapeat (talk) 13:14, 3 October 2011 (UTC)

IMO the article is too ambitious in what it tries to cover. For example. the sections on criticisms of Wikipedia, rather than introducing the issue and giving a very brief history, tend to explore specific controversies in some detail. The latter is too much for someone who comes to the article wanting a basic understanding of Wikipedia.

The introduction, as well as parts of the article body, strike me as being in somewhat verbose and promotional language.

For example, this sentence: "When Time magazine recognized You as its Person of the Year for 2006, acknowledging the accelerating success of online collaboration and interaction by millions of users around the world, it cited Wikipedia as one of several examples of Web 2.0 services, along with YouTube, MySpace, and Facebook."

could be simplified to:

"In its 2006 Person of the Year article, Time magazine recognized the rapid growth of online collaboration and interaction by millions of people around the world. It cited Wikipedia as an example, as well as YouTube, MySpace, and Facebook."

I think this conveys the point and it is less than half as long. Wanderer57 (talk) 20:30, 3 October 2011 (UTC)

I think you make some very good points which deserve further attention. I certainly agree that the "accelerating success" wording is non-neutral in describing Tine's Person of the Year. You could go ahead with your proposed wording change there. Feel free to correct other promotional language you've noticed in the article. -- JTSchreiber (talk) 05:24, 5 October 2011 (UTC)

Wanderer57, I put your proposed wording about Time magazine into the article. -- JTSchreiber (talk) 05:27, 14 October 2011 (UTC)

Teapeat, it doesn't matter whether the article's ratings are good or bad. If you want to improve it from whatever state it's in, it makes sense to start with the lowest-rated area.

This is the second time you've used criticism of Wikipedia as an example "article". The problem is that "criticism of Wikipedia" is a redirect, not an article, and redirects don't get reader ratings. And since we're on the topic of example articles, I suggest you look at Physics. It's a bigger subject than Wikipedia, yet the article is much smaller and the ratings are significantly higher. There's some evidence that a big topic doesn't need 75+ K of readable prose to get good reader ratings.

I would also point out that making the article much bigger will make it that much harder to get the article to FA status. That's because to get the article approved for FA, reviewers have to go over everything in the article with a fine tooth comb, then editors have to try to fix the problems and reviewers have to review it again. In general, the more stuff there is in the article, the longer this process takes. -- JTSchreiber (talk) 05:39, 5 October 2011 (UTC)

let me rephrase what JTSshreiber is saying to you Teapeat... "how dare you try and lengthen this. if you keep trying to lengthen it and put words in there that I don't want in it, I will not only threaten, but could very well make the process harder and longer to edit this page." IOW, the editors who happen to be allowed to make changes to an article are easily seduced and corrupted into making changes in the "process of editing" instead. This is a good tactic (and trick) for swinging the debate into their favor. this allows the editors "in charge" an escape to hide behind the "process" rather than discuss the substance. ask government beaurocrats... they are masters. Toliveanddie (talk) 13:56, 25 December 2011 (UTC)

Wikipedia Italiano

Has anyone seen the Italian version of Wikipedia? Is is offline, there is some kind of protest because of the Italian government? Adrian (talk) 09:22, 5 October 2011 (UTC)

Italian_Wikipedia#2011_mass_blanking_protest covers it - it's a reaction to a proposed bill in the Italian parliament requiring the online publishers of any content perceived to be defamatory to include an (uneditable) response from the objecting party, which isn't great for a Wikipedia project. --McGeddon (talk) 09:55, 5 October 2011 (UTC)

Ok. Thanks for the info. Adrian (talk) 10:52, 5 October 2011 (UTC)

Cluster in Korea handles much of load?

The article states that "Two larger clusters in the Netherlands and Korea now handle much of Wikipedia's traffic load". That seems surprising given Korea's extremely limited international bandwidth, and the server layout diagrams show two large clusters, in Florida and Amsterdam. Can anyone clarify whether there is a cluster in Korea and whether it is given appropriate prominence by the current wording? Maxchristian (talk) 09:15, 6 October 2011 (UTC)

Could you double check the URL for the layout diagrams? I get an error message ("No such special page") when I try to display them. Thanks. -- JTSchreiber (talk) 04:20, 9 October 2011 (UTC)

Fixed, thanks for the heads up. Maxchristian (talk) 17:53, 9 October 2011 (UTC)

I found this server description which says that the servers are in Florida and Amsterdam. I will update the article. There may have been Wikipedia servers in Korea at one time, as it is listed on the server layout diagram from 2006-03-12. -- JTSchreiber (talk) 05:24, 12 October 2011 (UTC)

WAITAMINUTE

Theres an article on wikipedia... on wikipedia — Preceding unsigned comment added by 98.225.211.87 (talk) 01:11, 20 October 2011 (UTC)

Mind-boggling. DaffyBridge (talk) 23:38, 24 October 2011 (UTC)

Its really simple. Wikipedia meets the Policies and Guidelines so it can have an article. It has also been pointed out several times that other encloypedias have articles about themselves and Wikipedia so I see no reason why it should be any different here.--199.91.207.3 (talk) 14:36, 27 October 2011 (UTC)

Please see the box near the top of the page, last bullet. It says "The question of whether Wikipedia should have an article on itself has been raised many times before, and the answer is definitely yes". I believe this solves this question. Oh, and by the way, words in "CAPITAL LETTERS" are consitored shouting. To emphasise something, it is preferred to use Bold Print. Just so more people know :) TheApplePi (talk) 04:46, 9 November 2011 (UTC)

Edit proposal

In my opinion it would be appropriate to mention PediaPress in the "Accessing Wikipedia's content" section since PediaPress is an official partner of Wikimedia Foundation. Veikk0.ma (talk) 06:58, 29 October 2011 (UTC)

agreed, all the wikimedia foundations should be in the article.Millertime246 (talk) 16:59, 2 November 2011 (UTC)

Screenshots

A bit of an unnecessary and odd suggestion, but maybe someone could retake the screenshots with an open-source OS such as Ubuntu. It just thought that it would be a bit more fitting for Wikipedia than OSX. I could probably do it if I was allowed. 184.203.251.231 (talk) 14:10, 12 November 2011 (UTC)

Agree While it is not a must, it would add to the idea of open-sourceness of WP. 'Bare'-Ubuntu may not be the best idea though. A 'traditional' Linux desktop environment is more appropriate in my opinion.Wingtipvortex (talk) 19:51, 15 November 2011 (UTC)

Which screen shots are you referring to? It seems a little redundant though, in none of the self made screen shots on this article is any OS or browser interface visible, nor do any of the image descriptions specify which OS or browser was used to take them. Яehevkor ✉ 20:11, 15 November 2011 (UTC)

Better explanation of the content license

After reading this section, I understand that I am allowed to copy Wikipedia content and use it exactly as I want. Right? But do I have to note that I took it from Wikipedia?

An interesting case: This radio host reads from Wikipedia (not exactly, but enough to be plagiarism), without mentioning Wikipedia. It is obviously plagiarism, but is it legal? Is it in accordance with the Wikipedia license?

88.234.3.161 (talk) 18:00, 13 November 2011 (UTC)

why people lie

Is it better to say nothing ,than to lie about something? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 108.38.171.193 (talk) 10:36, 17 November 2011 (UTC)

Are you saying that some part of an article is a lie and if so what part?--70.24.209.180 (talk) 04:07, 20 November 2011 (UTC)

Wikipedia's Alexa Rank is wrong

Wikipedia is rank 5 in the world on the Alexa website as of 17/11/11 but it is stated as only rank six on this page. should be changed i think! 85.225.252.139 (talk) 17:25, 17 November 2011 (UTC)

Unbalanced

Half of the chapter on "Quality of writing" reflects the view of one single person. This is lack of balance. --Ettrig (talk) 20:57, 18 November 2011 (UTC)

Thanks for pointing this out. I agree that the section is unbalanced and will begin working to correct the problem. -- JTSchreiber (talk) 05:43, 20 November 2011 (UTC)

WP:NPOV

Would it be considered bias if this article got nominated for "good" or "featured" status? 71.146.20.62 (talk) 07:21, 24 November 2011 (UTC)

The article has good status already, it was once a featured article many years ago but was later demoted. I don't think it'd pass the featured article criteria as it is, so if anyone were to nominate they'd have to be willing to the the considerable and time consuming task of greatly improving the article's quality. But no, as long as the article is indeed neutral and passes the criteria, I wouldn't be considered biased to promote it. Яehevkor ✉ 16:50, 24 November 2011 (UTC)

Okay, thank you for your advice! 71.146.20.62 (talk) 20:57, 24 November 2011 (UTC)

Governing hierarchy and structure of WP and the responsibilities of different agencies

This proposed addition to the article on WP lays out the actual administrative features of WP with links to the appropriate articles governing its jurisdiction. Some outline of this structure is a glaring omission in the present WP article. That information can be helpful to WP contributors in understanding how WP is run. I hope those with greater familiarity with this topic will suggest improvements and correct inaccuracies, and that this section ultimately can be added to this article. I originally wrote this section for Citizendium, and will correct any inaccuracies turned up here in that presentation. The proposal is below. Brews ohare (talk) 17:29, 2 December 2011 (UTC)

This article is not about how wisely authority is wielded, nor about how responsibly duties are exercised, but about the authority and duties of various agencies as documented by WP itself, however these precepts are used in practice. Brews ohare (talk) 15:53, 1 December 2011 (UTC)

Proposed text

Governance of Wikipedia

This section describes the formalities of Wikipedia organization, as described in various documents on Wikipedia.

Overview of organization

The contributors or editors of Wikipedia participate subject to a number of policies and guidelines governing behavior and content. These rules are supervised by various authorities: Jimmy Wales, nominally in a position of ultimate authority, although he has deferred in most instances to the leadership of Wikipedia, the ~34 present Bureaucrats or Crats, the ~728 active Administrators or Admins, and another group called the Arbitration Committee or ArbCom, with 15-18 members or Arbs, depending upon the rules adopted each year. There were 15 active Arbitrators in 2011. The Wikimedia Foundation or its designated agents also have authority to impose bans against IP addresses for pages, topics, or the entire site.

Bureaucrats

The Bureaucrats or Crats are a category introduced in 2004, and have only a few limited activities. Among these, they may remove Administrators and Bureaucrats if so instructed by the Arbitration Committee, and appoint Administrators and Bureaucrats following a selection procedure. Selection follows a discussion process, Bureaucrats decide what criteria constitute a "consensus" upon appointment, at the end of which a Bureaucrat reviews the situation to see whether there is a "consensus". Consensus must exceed 85%, but final judgment is one of Bureaucrat discretion. As a result, Bureaucrats have almost complete control over appointment of new Bureaucrats. The number of newly appointed Bureaucrats has steadily declined over the years, with only two successful candidacies in 2011. Bureaucrats serve indefinitely.

Administrators

The activities of Administrators or Admins are described in a how-to guide instructing Administrators on the use of their powers, which include actions to block users' IP addresses. There is a distinction between a ban and a block. A ban requires "consensus", and is a formal warning without removal of the ability to edit, while a block can be imposed by a single Administrator and prevents editing to some degree, large or small.

The nomination and selection of Administrators is supervised by existing Bureaucrats, who decide whether, in their opinion, a candidate has garnered sufficient support in discussion of their candidacy, a process like that for appointing Bureaucrats. A "consensus" exceeding 70% is required, but the judgement of Bureaucrats is the deciding factor. A list of unsuccessful requests shows the number of refusals peaked at 543 in 2006 with 353 acceptances, and has steadily declined since as the number of applicants has dropped off, with only 155 refusals and 75 acceptances in 2010, and 75 refusals and 46 acceptances as of end of October 2011.

Administrators serve indefinitely, but can be disbarred by Bureaucrats if the Arbitration Committee formally requests it. "Throughout the history of the project, there has been a convention that adminship may be removed only in cases of clear abuse." A possible exception to the "clear abuse" criterion is the Restriction on arbitration enforcement activity, which appropriates to the Arbitration Committee the power to limit an Administrator's activities whenever the Arbitration Committee deems that Administrator "consistently make[s] questionable enforcement administrative actions." and to decommission the Administrator if they override another Administrator's actions without the Arbitration Committee's written authorization or "clear, substantial, and active consensus of uninvolved editors".

As of 2009 there had been 47 removals during the history of WP, and following 2009 no public record has been maintained of these actions. Of the approximately 1,526 Administrators empowered, 207 (or 13.5%) have declared themselves open to recall under circumstances devised by themselves. There is a provision for possible removal of inactive Administrators.

Although attempts have been made to implement a community-based removal of Administrators, none ever has been agreed upon.

Arbitration Committee

Members of the Arbitration Committee (referred to as ArbCom) or Arbs act in concert or in sub-groups to impose binding solutions to conduct disputes the community has been unable to resolve, mainly by imposing, or defining violations under which they will impose, bans and blocks upon users' IP addresses. Though disputes commonly arise over content, the Arbitration Committee explicitly excludes all content issues from their deliberations and focuses upon disciplinary actions. Aside from enforcing an end to disputes, the Arbitration Committee can authorize users to irreversibly delete certain material, for example, material considered defamatory, and can request Bureaucrats to exercise de-Adminship under the circumstances described in the above section: Administrators. Arbitrators are elected annually in one-year or overlapping two-year terms, and also can be appointed directly by Wales or the Wikimedia Foundation. The election rules are debated each year.

Wikimedia Foundation

Wikipedia is one of a dozen projects of Wikimedia, owned and operated by the Wikimedia Foundation. Among the functionaries of WikiMedia are the Stewards of the Wikimedia wikis who have complete access to the wiki interface on all Wikimedia wikis, including the ability to change any and all user rights and groups; and the SysOps of the Wikimedia Meta-Wiki, who manage and maintain the Wikimedia Foundation servers. The tools used by the Stewards in exercising control over the wikis of Wikimedia are described in a handbook. Some indication of the control given to Stewards and System Administrators can be found on the WikiMedia web pages.

The overall control is by the ten-member Wikimedia Board of Trustees one of whom is Jimmy Wales. The present membership is found here.

References and notes

Comments on the proposed section

Comments and corrections for this proposal can go below.

Brews ohare (talk) 18:30, 27 November 2011 (UTC)

• Comment Looks like this belongs in an essay, not the Wikipedia article on Wikipedia. Angryapathy (talk) 14:32, 28 November 2011 (UTC)

Angryapathy: Thanks for taking some time to look at this proposed section on WP structure. I think it is inaccurate to classify this proposal as an essay. An essay is an article that "contains comments and advice of one or more Wikipedia contributors" related to "aspects of working on or with Wikipedia". See Wikipedia:Wikipedia essays. Although this proposed sub-section may prove helpful in working with WP, this article doesn't address how that might happen. Rather it is intended as a plainly factual description of the organization of WP, with links to documentation regarding the authority of the various administrative groups, links to reports upon membership figures for these groups, and links to official documentation regarding how the membership is selected and weeded out (if need be). Whatever is in the article is referenced directly to official WP documents. As a straightforward description of how WP is structured, I'd opine that this article (or some version of it) belongs in this article that claims to describe WP. If you find something tendentious in this presentation that seems to you to render it an opinion, rather than being factual, please indicate what should be done, in your opinion. Brews ohare (talk) 01:49, 29 November 2011 (UTC)

• Comment The lead section is incorrect, in that it implies that an individual bureaucrat or arbitrator is somehow superior to an individual administrator who is somehow superior to a Wikipedia editor. They're not; in most cases of disagreement, everyone's voice is equal. In an argument about article content or user behaviour, an arbitrator's voice carries no more weight than that of any other editor. The things that matter are personal reputation, experience, persuasiveness, common sense, guidelines and policies - which tend to be acquired separately of formal titles. (Consider User:SandyGeorgia, User:Giano, User:Malleus Fatuorum, User:Δ, among other very influential non-admins.) Now you could say that the ArbCom as a group carries a lot of weight, in the sense that they can make formal decisions that then have to be enforced. But not as individuals. Bureaucrats take actions as individuals, but have minimal power, that being only to decide when an WP:RFA succeeds or not, which are fairly rare decisions nowadays, and even then only when consensus is not clear - it quite often is.

Now admins can be said to have a fair bit of power: they can block editors, protect articles, delete articles, interpret consensus, etc. They are not supposed to use these powers with editors or articles with or about whom they have personal disagreements, but that leaves a lot of gray areas. So far all Bureaucrats and Arbs have first been admins, and what individual power they have has come from this.

The "open to recall" section is much more complex than "majority vote of the community", standards differ for each admin. By the way, nothing ever gets done by majority vote of the community here (and hardly could, since there are millions of editors, who would wait for half of them to vote?); most things are by "consensus" which is, at best, super-majority of the participants, but usually even more complex than that. --GRuban (talk) 21:29, 30 November 2011 (UTC)

Hi GRuban: I'd like to go over the points you raise and see if something can be done to make things better. I'll try to identify your points individually:

1. The lead section implies a bureaucrat or arbitrator is superior to an administrator. I suppose that impression is taken because ArbCom is said to have the authority to remove Adminship by instructing a Bureaucrat to do so. I believe that is the case, according to WP documentation that is cited. It also is said in WP documentation that the custom stands that no Admin is to be removed except under a cloud of malfeasance in office, so it is certainly not the case at all that Admins serve "at the pleasure" of ArbCom. And the article also says a Bureaucrat cannot act upon removal unless instructed to do so by ArbCom, and that Bureaucrats have only "technical" duties and are definitely not super-Admins. So it seems to me that the lead section actually says what you say in your first paragraph, leading me to think that somehow this section gets off on the wrong foot, although in fact it is entirely accurate, and agrees with the points you raise about how WP works. What can be done to make this clearer and avoid getting hackles raised?

I have added an introductory sentence to point out the narrow focus of this proposed section. Brews ohare (talk) 16:43, 1 December 2011 (UTC)

2. Recall is not by "majority vote of the community'. Now I believe the article makes it perfectly clear that Admins serve basically forever and no recall process exists except for blatant abuse (I'd say except for getting ArbCom annoyed in the extreme, which isn't often the case). Something well under a fraction of a percent of Admins have ever been disbarred. The article also says that some 13% of Admins have agreed to place themselves as subject to recall by the community, and maybe that is what you are referring to. It may be that when this 13% elected this option they have placed their own individual stamp upon the circumstances in which they will bow to community pressure, and their departure is a lot less likely than it may appear on the surface. If that is what you are getting at, that discussion can be corrected. What would you say?

I have amended this discussion. Brews ohare (talk) 15:44, 1 December 2011 (UTC)

3. Bureaucrats and Arbs have power because they are also Admins. I'd say that formally Arbs have authority according to the WP regulations governing Arbs, regardless of their other capacities or past offices. It may be that this formal WP documentation is only de jure, and de facto Arbs depend upon their other hats, but that situation would be undocumented. I doubt that matters that are de facto but are not de jure can be put into a descriptive document like this that is dependent upon explicit de jure WP documentation of authority and rules of conduct, and cannot draw upon testimony or anecdote. Perhaps you can help here?

4.In most cases of disagreement... an arbitrator's voice carries no more weight than that of any other editor. On this point WP documentation gives all the authority to the Admin or Arb, and the editor must cultivate their approval or get blocked or banned. You may entertain the view that the power of Admins and Arbs is applied with great wisdom and restraint (that is not not my observation or experience, but so what?) but this article is not about wisdom and restraint, but about the authority and responsibilities of various agencies, however they are used in practice.

5. The things that matter are personal reputation, experience, persuasiveness, common sense, guidelines and policies These factors undoubtedly play a role, but they are not embodied in the formal description of WP administrative structure responsibilities and authorities. That is, this subject lies outside the scope of this proposal, which is limited to a description of the hierarchy and its formalities, and doesn't pretend to deal with the Zeitgeist.

Altogether, I think the article is very much closer to your views than you have credited, and quite possibly minor adjustments would make it entirely acceptable. I hope you will provide some guidance. Brews ohare (talk) 16:30, 1 December 2011 (UTC)

Thank you, GRuban. Several changes have been made as a result of your comments. If you have more, please suggest them. Brews ohare (talk) 17:03, 1 December 2011 (UTC)

• I'd remove most or all phrases about what things are not, and just describe what they are. For example, replace "This section describes the formalities of Wikipedia administration, and as such does not deal with the Zeitgiest of Wikipedia, things like how reputation, experience, persuasiveness, or common sense may enter into decisions, nor does it describe the numerous policies and guidelines intended to assist decisions made on Wikipedia." with "This section describes the formalities of Wikipedia administration." ; replace "Bureaucrats are not super-admins, and have no authority beyond certain technical activities. Among these, they are empowered to ... " with "Bureaucrats are empowered to ..." and so forth.
• The abbreviation Arb is short for Arbitrator. I think we can use the full word in the article. Same for Crat.
• Admin promotion is a combination of Bureaucrat judgment and numerical range - no one has ever been approved below 60% or been failed above 80%. (I can't find the ref at the moment, but I'm pretty sure I saw it recently.)
• I don't like the phrasing "The contributors or editors of Wikipedia are at the bottom of the Wikipedia hierarchy". That's like saying that the citizens are at the bottom of the [insert your democracy of choice here] hierarchy; it implies a lack of respect. --GRuban (talk) 18:53, 1 December 2011 (UTC)
• The beginning of the Administrators section repeats the role of Bureaucrats. "There are no clear-cut criteria" is another of the "what things are not" sections. The words "entire" and "entirely" are redundant (here, as well as in several other places).

Clearly improved, though. --GRuban (talk) 19:08, 1 December 2011 (UTC)

--GRuban (talk) 18:53, 1 December 2011 (UTC)

I thought these were good suggestions, and have made a number of changes along these lines. Please comment further, and thank you again. Brews ohare (talk) 19:57, 1 December 2011 (UTC)

• Comment: I had originally removed this because its a rant sourced to Wikipedia. Lets see what others have to say. "Jimmy Wales, ostensibly in a position of ultimate authority" LIES....Moxy (talk) 15:55, 2 December 2011 (UTC)

Moxy: The way Wikipedia is structured, that is, its organizational offices, officers, and their various duties and authorities, are described best in WP sources, as WP itself naturally provides its own basis for determining its own organization. It hardly seems inappropriate for a discussion of this structure to use the documents the organization uses to delineate its own structure.

I also find it difficult to understand how this factual and carefully sourced account of something so mundane as the organization of WP can be called a rant. That term is derogatory, and at a minimum requires concrete explanation. Brews ohare (talk) 16:22, 2 December 2011 (UTC)

• Comment: As Moxy pointed out, it only uses Wikipedia as a source. These are primary sources and should be used with care and not solely to support text as large as this, using primary sources can also quite easily cause original research issues. Are there any sources independent of Wikipedia to support the majority of this text? Яehevkor ✉ 15:58, 2 December 2011 (UTC)

Rehevkor: As noted above, there is no better source to describe the structure of an organization than the organizing documentation of the organization itself. I believe the sourcing to WP has indeed been done with care, and uses nothing in the way of opinion or conjecture, but only the dry bones of how WP is set up. Brews ohare (talk) 16:22, 2 December 2011 (UTC)

Care perhaps, but without independent sources I would be unable to personally support it's inclusion, the issue of WP:OR is too great (of which there seems to be plenty). There still exists a lot of unsourced material as well as cross-namespace/external links which are shouldn't be there (they should be cited as sources or not used at all). Яehevkor ✉ 16:37, 2 December 2011 (UTC)

It would be helpful if you could actually supply detailed examples rather than generalities. The "external links" actually are all links to WP itself, but with complete http addresses instead of internal [[links]]. These could be made footnotes, of course. They are used as in-text links where the wording clearly described the content of the link, while footnotes were used where a close wording like that wouldn't work.

It would be most helpful if you could point out any WP:OR. As the author of this piece I may not be as sensitive to such matters as you are: my view is that there is not any WP:OR. Brews ohare (talk) 16:56, 2 December 2011 (UTC)

The unsourced sections are all intrinsically problematic by default. I'll give a couple examples of OR, but I'm not going to spend all day picking through because until some non-primary sources are used it won't do much to help the text. "The Wikimedia Foundation or its designated agents also have unlimited authority to impose blocks and bans against IP addresses for pages, topics, or the entire site." Source makes no mention of the Foundations ability to block, and only mentions that they are one of the partied able to impose a ban, rather than the "unlimited authority" mentioned by the text. "Although many attempts have been made to implement a community-based removal of Admins" The source gives only an "example" which cannot support the text alone. I have made my opposition clear, without non-primary sources per WP:PRIMARY I am simply unable to support it's inclusion. Яehevkor ✉ 17:22, 2 December 2011 (UTC)

Your example of the ability of the Foundation to impose bans, but no mention of blocks is quite correct and I've changed that. The assertion that "many attempts" have been made is supported, as you say, by only one example. The statement is supported by other documents on WP such as this one, but it is probably simpler just to delete the word "many", which I have done.

However, you state that no corrections in response to your claims of WP:OR will result in your support unless "non-primary sources" are invoked. I hardly think that sourcing WP about simple matters of fact related to its structure, without commentary or opinion, is a matter for concern. The cautions used by WP about using primary sources are not intended to avoid reference to basic documents like the layout of the New York City subway system, nor to basic documents describing WP formal organizational structure. Rather, these cautions are meant to avoid parochialism, "accounts written by people who are directly involved, offering an insider's view of an event", etc. That parochialism might occur in controversial topics, where there are original primary sources that conflict. Then objectivity can be secured by using overviews of all sides by historians or the like. I hardly think there is a word of controversy in this proposal about WP structure, objectivity is never an issue, and WP:PRIMARY is not violated here. Brews ohare (talk) 18:49, 2 December 2011 (UTC)

WP:PRIMARY: "Do not base [] material entirely on primary sources." I stand by this. Яehevkor ✉ 18:55, 2 December 2011 (UTC)

Note that "Wikipedia may be cited with caution as a primary source of information on itself, such as in articles about itself". I guess the key phrase here is with caution. This article talk page —in combination with the RFC— should watch over that. - DVdm (talk) 19:31, 2 December 2011 (UTC)

←outdent DVdm: Thanks for that link to Wikipedia may be cited with caution as a primary source of information on itself, such as in articles about itself. I guess time will tell whether there is consensus that WP has been used properly in this proposed section as a source about itself. I do think that it has been used as it should be. Brews ohare (talk) 19:46, 2 December 2011 (UTC)

Lest we lose sight of the point here in a debate over whether some guideline or policy applies or not, or whether some adjective is appropriate, can it be agreed that some attempt at laying out the organizational structure should be a part of this article on Wikipedia? Brews ohare (talk) 19:53, 2 December 2011 (UTC)

I'm good with that. Rich Farmbrough, 20:41, 2 December 2011 (UTC).

• Comments. Avoid words like "new" and "presently". I would add that there is now a stale admin removal process. I would also distinguish powers and authority. Admins have the power to block, but not the authority to ban. And the power to block is not carte blanche to do so. In the introduction I would replace the word "administration" with something else, to avoid confusion with administrators. I would pull all the abbreviations, they don't elucidate the subject - they may have relevance in another article somewhere. Jimbo's "supreme authority" is to a large extent only effective with the consent of the community these days (which I think is as he wants it), very careful wording should be used - the document you refer to has no policy status. Rich Farmbrough, 20:41, 2 December 2011 (UTC).
  

I have attempted to implement these suggestions. Please let me know if more has to be done. Brews ohare (talk) 21:25, 2 December 2011 (UTC)

• Comment I find it rather astonishing that we are even having this discussion. There would be no chance that this material would survive if it were about any other website. Let me recall some our our policies. Wikipedia:No original research: "Material based purely on primary sources should be avoided." "primary sources that have been reliably published may be used in Wikipedia, but only with care"; Wikipedia:Verifiability: "all material added to articles must be attributable to a reliable, published source appropriate for the content in question"; Wikipedia:Identifying reliable sources: "Self-published and questionable sources may be used as sources of information about themselves [...] so long as [...] (5) the article is not based primarily on such sources". The proposed material clearly contravenes these requirements. We cannot use it. Cusop Dingle (talk) 20:57, 4 December 2011 (UTC)

Cusop Dingle: Apparently you do not agree with the above remarks related to using WP as a source about WP. However, disagreement with "Wikipedia may be cited with caution as a primary source of information on itself, such as in articles about itself" should be based, not upon WP:OR or WP:Primary, but upon specifics about inadequate "caution" in the use of WP for this purpose. Inasmuch as all the statements about WP are dry fact, for example: there are three agencies: Bureaucrats, Administrators and Arbitrators, it is difficult to claim a lack of caution, like injection of opinion or commentary. What would you suggest are problematic uses of WP as a source about WP here? Brews ohare (talk) 21:17, 4 December 2011 (UTC)

It is not me, but our core policies on verifiability that do not agree with those remarks, as I have just shown. Whether or not the statements are or are not "dry facts", The threshold for inclusion in Wikipedia is verifiability, not truth. Cusop Dingle (talk) 21:29, 4 December 2011 (UTC)

(ec) (Not commenting on detailed technical comments below, just on this partial one.) Note that the thing that says that "Wikipedia may be cited with caution as a primary source of information on itself, such as in articles about itself", is indeed part of the core policy — see wp:CIRCULAR, part of policy Wikipedia:Verifiability. Our job, so to speak, is to help making sure on the talk page that the primary sources are cited with caution — which seems to be exactly what you are doing below, so do carry on :-) - DVdm (talk) 21:56, 4 December 2011 (UTC)

"With caution" is simply not a licence to base the entire section on primary sources, which is specifically stated as unacceptable. "May" in "may be used" does not overturn the "must" in "all material added to articles must be attributable to a reliable, published source appropriate for the content in question". The appropriate tone for using primary sources would be in a context such as "According to Wikipedia itself, it ..." An entire section cannot be written this way. Cusop Dingle (talk) 22:09, 4 December 2011 (UTC)

I agree with Cusop Dingle and others that the current proposed addition is unacceptable because it uses primary sources only. There's been a lot of discussion about various words in this WP:CIRCULAR sentence: "Wikipedia may be cited with caution as a primary source of information on itself, such as in articles about itself," The discussion has focused mostly on the words "may be cited with caution". While these words have some importance, I think the most important words in the sentence are "as a primary source". Do these words mean that Wikipedia may be used as some kind of special primary source that is granted an exemption from WP:PRIMARY? No, it means Wikipedia may be used as an ordinary primary source and that the rules of WP:PRIMARY apply for Wikipedia just like they apply for any other primary source. If you don't agree, follow the link to WP:CIRCULAR and look at the link on "primary source". That link takes you to WP:PRIMARY.

That brings me back to the WP:PRIMARY sentence: "Do not base articles and material entirely on primary sources." While the proposed addition is obviously not an entire article, it is a significant amount of material and thus needs secondary sources to comply with WP:PRIMARY. -- JTSchreiber (talk) 23:30, 4 December 2011 (UTC)

• Detailed comment "Wikipedia is subject to the Wikimedia Foundation, which is primarily interested in technical functions of its various operations under Wikimedia." is unsourced to any source, reliable or otherwise. The inline url leads to a page stating "The Wikimedia Foundation, Inc. is a nonprofit charitable organization dedicated to encouraging the growth, development and distribution of free, multilingual content, and to providing the full content of these wiki-based projects to the public free of charge" which is not consistent with the primary interest stated in the proposed text. Cusop Dingle (talk) 21:39, 4 December 2011 (UTC)
• Detailed comment "Wikipedia is subject to the Wikimedia Foundation, which is primarily interested in technical functions of its various operations under Wikimedia. These operations include thirteen subsidiaries, one of which is Wikipedia. Near the top of the Wikimedia hierarchy are Stewards of the Wikimedia wikis who have complete access to the wiki interface on all Wikimedia wikis, including the ability to change any and all user rights and groups; and the System Administrators or SysOps of the Wikimedia Meta-Wiki who manage and maintain the Wikimedia Foundation servers." Completely unsourced. In what sense is Wikipedia a "subsidiary" of WMF? Does this mean it is a wholly-owned body corporate? What is the Wikimedia hierarchy? It has a Board of Trustees and an Advisory Board -- what does it mean to say Stewards are "near the top"? Where is the reliable secondary source for all of this? Cusop Dingle (talk) 21:46, 4 December 2011 (UTC)
• Detailed comment "A ban requires "consensus", and is a formal warning without removal of the ability to edit, while a block can be imposed by a single Administrator and prevents editing to some degree, large or small.[9]" Text is inconsistent with the cited source. Cusop Dingle (talk) 21:49, 4 December 2011 (UTC)
• Detailed comment "Consensus must surpass a numerical threshold of 85%, but final judgment is one of Bureaucrat discretion. [8]" Text is inconsistent with proposed source, which states "Consensus at RFA is not determined by surpassing a numerical threshold. As a rule of thumb, most of those above 80% approval pass; most of those below 70% fail". Cusop Dingle (talk) 21:52, 4 December 2011 (UTC)
• Detailed comment "The activities of Administrators or Admins are well described in a how-to guide". Who says this is well-described? Cusop Dingle (talk) 21:54, 4 December 2011 (UTC)

Cusop Dingle: You have raised a few points of minor moment where a verbatim quote or the like would drive the points home unequivocally. Possibly there are some readers that would appreciate having such a close reading of the WikiMedia documentation to insure that no glaring errors have occurred in describing the role of the Wikimedia Foundation in the running of Wikipedia. (Of course, there are no grievous misportrayals.)

I have attempted here to fill in an obvious omission in the Wikipedia article, namely, how it is organized and who does what. I have made numerous small revisions, and a few corrections of fact, to satisfy responsible reviewers. So far as I can tell, these changes have had no impact on the eventual acceptance of this addition. To meet misplaced flag-waving of WP:OR I also could copy similar text from "secondary sources" to the same effect as my direct quotes from WP. However, in my view, that would not appease these critics who would simply object over further minutiae.

I have spent plenty of time here trying to present an acceptable accounting of a very simple matter: the formal organization of WP. So far as I can tell, the best course is to leave the filling of this void to the critics themselves, to put their own shoulders to the wheel and to expend some of their time and grey matter, and they can try to present this matter in a way they find adequate, based upon secondary sources, and settle their own qualms about the subject among themselves.

Unfortunately, I do most seriously doubt that any effort actually will be made. Brews ohare (talk) 03:25, 5 December 2011 (UTC)

For an encyclopaedia, accuracy is never "of minor moment". Cusop Dingle (talk) 07:34, 5 December 2011 (UTC)

Meta comment Cusop's points are mainly valid, but they are not show stoppers. The (a) reason we have a wiki is so that points like this can be fixed with less effort than it takes to discuss them. In terms of citation this is mostly citable from secondary sources, however we should be careful to ensure that we reflect the actuality, as secondary sources are not always accurate. And again these are very much matters for the normal editing process. Rich Farmbrough, 12:41, 5 December 2011 (UTC).

Note:I would definitely make that "subsidiary projects" although I'm not sure you can define the number exactly, and if this were part of the article I would change that now. Rich Farmbrough, 12:45, 5 December 2011 (UTC).

Rich: Thank you for pointing out that the minor changes that may be needed here could easily be made as normal corrections in a normal editing process. That is not going to happen, of course, because the moment this proposal is placed in the article it will again be reverted. It's time for those who challenge this proposal either to 'fess up that they will nit-pick any such proposal to death, or to do some work themselves to make a contribution they can live with. Brews ohare (talk) 16:43, 5 December 2011 (UTC)

Probably not a good idea to say "I hope those with greater familiarity with this topic will suggest improvements and correct inaccuracies" and then say that those who do want to "nit-pick [it] to death". If there are no reliable independent secondary sources for this material, then it does not belong in Wikipedia at all. Cusop Dingle (talk) 18:28, 5 December 2011 (UTC)

I agree 100% with the first sentence — for obvious reasons.

I agree 0% with the second, as it flatly wipes the core policy wp:verifiability, sub WP:CIRCULAR off the table, saying:

• "Wikipedia may be cited with caution as a primary source of information on itself, such as in articles about itself".

But it looks like we are all repeating ourselves. - DVdm (talk) 18:58, 5 December 2011 (UTC)

The key point of WP:CIRCULAR is that the sources can be used with caution and as WP:PRIMARY says text shouldn't be based solely on primary sources. Neither of these are being addressed. Has anyone even looked for some usable secondary sources? Яehevkor ✉ 19:08, 5 December 2011 (UTC)

Someone might have written something at Citizendium ;-) Sorry, couldn't resist — won't happen again. - DVdm (talk) 19:20, 5 December 2011 (UTC)

Oh you. Яehevkor ✉ 19:49, 5 December 2011 (UTC)

There is no contradiction between the propositions "If there are no reliable independent secondary sources for this material, then it does not belong in Wikipedia" and "Wikipedia may be cited with caution as a primary source of information on itself, such as in articles about itself". The conclusion is that when there are reliable independent secondary sources for material, it may be included, using those sources as citations, and those citations supplemented with citations from Wikipedia used cautiously. This is not the case here, where only primary sources are being adduced. Cusop Dingle (talk) 21:56, 5 December 2011 (UTC)

In my understanding the conclusion is that when there are reliable independent secondary sources for material, it may be included, using those sources as citations, and those citations supplemented with citations from Wikipedia used cautiously, and since this is not the case here, where only primary sources are being adduced, the material can be inserted with primary sources alone, with caution. - DVdm (talk) 15:13, 6 December 2011 (UTC)

No. "Wikipedia may be cited with caution as a primary source of information on itself, such as in articles about itself" is an explanation of how WP:Primary applies to Wikipedia as a primary source, not a get-out-of-jail-free card exempting the topic of Wikipedia from the requirements of verifiability by reliable independent secondary sources. Cusop Dingle (talk) 18:05, 6 December 2011 (UTC)

Yes, we know, that is your interpretation of wp:CIRCULAR. Apparently other contributors have a different interpretation. The caution clause in there is meant to make sure, by consensus, that get-out-of-jail-free cards are not handed out in those cases where secondary sources are not available. - DVdm (talk) 18:13, 6 December 2011 (UTC)

I'm not sure where in WP:CIRCULAR it states that this overrides the requirement of secondary sources set forth by WP:PRIMARY. CIRCULAR specifically states Wikipedia can be used as a primary source, but doesn't say that can be the only source. PRIMARY still applies here. Яehevkor ✉ 18:22, 6 December 2011 (UTC)

Indeed, that seems to have been left open to interpretation. Perhaps it should be explicitly clarified in WP:CIRCULAR itself, i.o.w. something to be discussed/proposed at Wikipedia_talk:Verifiability. - DVdm (talk) 18:29, 6 December 2011 (UTC)

←outdent Per Cusop Dingle, I've corrected a link for RfB, deleted the word "well" from "well described", and amended the discussion of the Wikimedia Foundation to avoid any impression of hierarchy there. Brews ohare (talk) 20:35, 5 December 2011 (UTC)

Another point, I still don't understand the need for the external/cross-namespace links links in the body of the text. Per WP:ELPOINTS and WP:SELF this should be avoided Яehevkor ✉ 22:24, 5 December 2011 (UTC)

Secondary sources

For those who may wish to find secondary sources for the proposed material here, below is a list of sources such as I could locate. Unfortunately, none of them really is satisfactory: some are inaccurate and most are oriented toward being a "user manual" for WP, and do not attempt to lay out its organization. Brews ohare (talk) 05:08, 6 December 2011 (UTC)

• Phoebe Ayers, Charles Matthews, Ben Yates (2008). How Wikipedia works: and how you can be a part of it. No Starch Press. ISBN 159327176X.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link) A detailed discussion of how WP works, including the arbitration processes. Some subsidiary web links are found here.

• John Broughton (2008). Wikipedia: the missing manual. O'Reilly Media, Inc. ISBN 0596515162. A "how-to" manual that besides mechanics of use, includes sections on dispute resolution over both content (Chapter 10: Resolving content disputes) and personal attacks (Chapter 11: Handling incivility and personal attacks).

• Andrew Lih (2009). The Wikipedia revolution: How a bunch of nobodies created the world's greatest encyclopedia. London: Aurum. ISBN 9781845134730. Forward by Jimmy Wales. An enthusiast's attempt at a history of Wikipedia, faulted for some gaffes by reviewers on Amazon.

• Dan Woods, Peter Thoeny (2007). "Chapter 4: Using and improving the 800-pound gorilla of wikis, Wikipedia". Wikis for dummies. Wiley. pp. pp. 81 ff. ISBN 0470043997. {{cite book}}: |pages= has extra text (help) A basic "how-to" manual for readers and first-time contributors.

• • WP:NPOV: "Neutrality requires that each article or other page in the mainspace fairly represents all significant viewpoints that have been published by reliable sources, in proportion to the prominence of each viewpoint." (my italics) If satisfactory sources cannot be found, then the material is simply not encyclopedic. Cusop Dingle (talk) 07:28, 6 December 2011 (UTC)

Cusop Dingle: In your view, because there is no secondary source (at least that I could find) that mentions Bureaucrats, one cannot make the statement that this class exists on WP by citing (for example) WP:Bureaucrats or perhaps some other WP reference to Bureaucrats? Likewise, one cannot cite WP to support the observation that there are elections for ArbCom members? And so forth? That is, simple facts about WP cannot be presented, a direct contradiction of DVdm's observation that "Wikipedia may be cited with caution as a primary source of information on itself, such as in articles about itself." Clearly, WP:Primary is meant to avoid "sourcing" controversial claims, not to serve as a gag order, and so far as I can see, there are no such problems with controversial topics in this proposal. You now have introduced WP:NPOV as another objection, and yet you have cited no instance of a failure of neutrality. There is no such lack of neutrality in this proposal. At most, what has been turned up by comments so far are some (minor) factual inaccuracies and awkward phrasings that have been corrected, and that normal editing of the published paragraphs would correct through normal editing. Brews ohare (talk) 14:49, 6 December 2011 (UTC)

There obviously cannot be "significant viewpoints" that present a variety of views upon simple facts like "Wikipedia is a project owned and operated by the Wikimedia Foundation". Brews ohare (talk) 14:57, 6 December 2011 (UTC)

Draft article

A draft article along these lines is in this draft. All are invited to look it over and make changes with accompanying discussion on its Talk page. Brews ohare (talk) 22:12, 6 December 2011 (UTC)

The revised version of this article is now posted at Wikipedia:Formal organization. Brews ohare (talk) 16:45, 22 December 2011 (UTC)