Wikipedia talk:Village pump (assistance)

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This page is for discussion about the village pump only. You may want one of the village pump subpages below, or one of the links on the village pump main page. Irrelevant discussions will be moved or removed.

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Please note that the Village pump talk pages are rarely used, but might allow to archive relevant discussions.

Request move page

Now we have this excellent addition to the VP should we keep the WP:RM (request move) page? violet/riga (t) 20:32, 24 Oct 2004 (UTC)

What is this page for?

I have no clarity at all on what this page is for. Is it for asking for action on tasks that only an admin can do? or what? -- Jmabel | Talk 05:55, Oct 25, 2004 (UTC)

Good question. I don't understand it totally myself. I think it's for requests for assistance from other Wikipedians that don't apply directly to specific pages. If this is considered reasonable, it could be added to the page. JesseW 04:58, 8 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Archive policy

Can I put a notice that the archive policy applied at Wikipedia:Village_pump_(miscellaneous)#Miscellaneous_archive also applies here? Currently, there does not seem to be a clear policy. If I don't get any objections within a week, I'll do it. JesseW 04:58, 8 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Help needed interpreting a guideline

(moved to Wikipedia:Village pump (assistance) - Jmabel | Talk 05:55, 24 March 2006 (UTC)

Village pump?

While your point about edit summaries is well taken, Richard, you should probably know that I've never even seen this page before, let alone edited it. I think whoever complained to you has me mixed up with someone else. Treybien 17:42 13 September 2006. (UTC)

Help!

Where can I go for help, on an editor who is belligerent, abusive, violating 3RR rampantly, etc.? He is a new user and a SPE. Please someone, help. The editor is Curtis Bledsoe. Here is [[1]]. Please help, someone.Jance 00:46, 31 December 2006 (UTC)

Report 3RR violations at WP:AN3. Superm401 - Talk 19:58, 3 January 2007 (UTC)

Proposal: Redirect this page to Wikipedia:Help desk, which it entirely duplicates

This page seems to be effectively a duplicte of the longer wstablished Help desk page. I think it probably should be converted into a redirect to the Help Desk. DES ^(talk) 15:35, 14 November 2005 (UTC)

Agreed! jnothman ^talk 17:43, 14 November 2005 (UTC)

Agree — Ilγαηερ (Tαlκ) 17:35, 26 December 2005 (UTC)

Keep - While I initially agreed, this page is geared more toward requests for hands-on assistance. And even if it duplicates the desks in function to some degree, it's completely harmless. I'd say keep it, as it does no harm.  The Transhumanist    19:00, 3 May 2007 (UTC)

Keep this around- or Disagree I guess, as per Transhumanist. It's slightly different, and if it does largely duplicate, what's the harm? -steventity 21:33, 3 May 2007 (UTC)

Keep it around. It is explicitly "To post requests for assistance not covered by the Help desk or the Reference desk". Vassyana 00:00, 4 May 2007 (UTC)

Keep Goldfritha 00:05, 4 May 2007 (UTC)

The harm of keeping this page around is that people sometimes have to wait a long time to get a response to their question here, whereas if they had instead posted it on the Help Desk, they would have gotten a response quickly. The Help Desk has more eyes on it. User:Alutena^(talk) 18:57, 19 September 2007 (UTC)

Keep. I find that this page attracts some esoteric questions that I occasionally know the answer to, and it is worth keeping it on my watchlist. (It is fun to be able to answer an obscure question, or see someone else answer a tricky question). Wikipedia:Help desk does get more attention and gets answers quicker, but many of the questions are extremely basic. It is not a terrible thing to have separate sections for beginner questions and obscure questions, though I suppose not everyone is aware this exists. EdJohnston 16:06, 24 September 2007 (UTC)

I really cannot fathom this perennial desire to streamline the help system to the point at which we will end up with just one big overburdened venue for editors' questions. This proposal has been tried with NCH, EA, and now this section. I long ago gave up contributing to the HD precisely because of its high-traffic nature. Adrian M. H. 17:36, 24 September 2007 (UTC)

While I agree that one big avenue will take edit conflicts to a whole new level, this desk and others do seem to duplicate efforts. To be fair, this desk doesn't really get a huge amount of questions so merging/redirecting wouldn't be so much of an issue, but this page does seem to attract a different set of users. I'd think that "Village pump" would scare off newcomers rather than "Help desk". That said, it's the first time I've heard of WP:EA and looking at that, I think that although a complete streamline is unwarranted and unmaintainable, there has to be some sort of merger or something. x42bn6 Talk Mess 17:44, 24 September 2007 (UTC)

I'm a screaming newbie who has just posted a question here, and when I saw this discuscussion, I thought "Well, looks like I need to post on the other page as well - sigh." My vote would to be merge because a) combined traffic does not seem high, and b) concentrating eyeballs is better in getting help to the people that need it. FWIW, I was also a little put off by the term "Village Pump" which seems to imply crusty old timers suspicious of newcomers. --Gilgongo (talk) 15:23, 12 January 2008 (UTC)

Keep per Transhumanist and EdJohnston. Masterpiece2000 (talk) 14:31, 10 June 2008 (UTC)

Proposed template change

I'm proposing an additional category in the Template:Editabuselinks to reduce the number of posts at WP:AN and WP:AN/I, please feel free to comment here User:Mbisanz/TemplateSandbox. MBisanz ^talk 13:18, 5 January 2008 (UTC)

Ref tag not working

Sorry for the stupid question, but I'm trying to insert a reference in some text (as a footnote) using the ref tag. I've read the docs on this, and I think I'm doing it right, but all that happens is the footnote number appears, but the reference itself doesn't (I assume it should appear as an anchor in the References section at the bottom of the article). I'm not getting any error on preview, and my syntax is the simplest - just an open and closed ref tag with a url in the middle that links to the external reference. Can anyone help? I'm getting close to tears. --Gilgongo (talk) 15:18, 12 January 2008 (UTC)

Typing <references /> or {{reflist}} determines where the citations actually show up. –Pomte 15:21, 12 January 2008 (UTC)

Wow - thanks for fast response! I'm sure I tried that, but I'll try it again. --Gilgongo (talk) 15:24, 12 January 2008 (UTC)

Committed identities

I'm trying to understand this user committed identities: are there any examples around so I could see one? Richiar (talk) 02:49, 9 February 2008 (UTC)

The first user that appeared on Special:Whatlinkshere/Template:User committed identity was User:The Epopt - see at the bottom of the userpage. x42bn6 Talk Mess 03:39, 9 February 2008 (UTC)

OK, I see that. Thanks: I think I'm making some progress now. Richiar (talk) 06:34, 9 February 2008 (UTC)

Notice of merger proposal

An editor has suggested the merger of VP(A) and the HD. See Wikipedia_talk:Help_desk#Merger_proposal. - Icewedge (talk) 21:22, 29 July 2008 (UTC)

There were open discussions

Why don't you move them to helpdesk. Apotetios (talk) 00:16, 16 August 2008 (UTC)

Opinion of an administrator

in Talk:Gustavo Cerati#Infobox / Notable Instruments there's a fight over an issue between users on a section of the infobox. Would be nice if an administrator who knows about the music infobox decides that the best thing that can do. JGabriel ar (talk) 23:39, 27 November 2010 (UTC)

Edit request on 8 March 2014

Please remove interwiki links in the source code of the page. There is something called Wikidata. Also, those listed corresponds to the help desk. Huang (talk ^{in public} _{in private} | contribs) 17:37, 8 March 2014 (UTC)

Done — Mr. Stradivarius ^{♪ talk ♪} 02:33, 9 March 2014 (UTC)

Protected edit request on 11 December 2014

Please replace the penultimate lines

[[Category:Wikipedia noticeboards|{{PAGENAME}}]]
[[Category:Wikipedia help forums|{{PAGENAME}}]]</noinclude><!--

with

[[Category:Wikipedia village pump|χ]]</noinclude><!--

Sardanaphalus (talk) 17:36, 11 December 2014 (UTC)

Done — Mr. Stradivarius ^{♪ talk ♪} 06:40, 19 December 2014 (UTC)