Wikipedia talk:Community portal/Archive 3

Archive 1Archive 2Archive 3Archive 4Archive 5→Archive 10

Melasma Redirect

Please help me revert a redirect (I don't know how). Right now, the original melasma article is redirected to melasma praegnans, and there is a new article as melasma. The problem is, there isn't a "melasma praegnans" - it's a made up name. The accepted medical name for this condition is melasma, or chloasma, or mask of pregnancy. This person also wrote other nonsensical articles melasma suprarenale and Atromeroptic Law (no such optics law). All his edits are suspect (as I noted on VfD page on his invention called the Wehner blower and its various redirects). Hfwd 23:12, 13 August 2005 (UTC)

where to buy

i want to know of there is anyware to buy wikipedia on dvd's, i live in the uk and can not seem to find anyware although i found one site that sold them in the US.

Please stop a vandal

Please see user:ScapegoatVandals edits and make your own judgements. He is making all the time modifications which are based on unsure claims, even racist ideologies. I cant talk him all the time and try to correct the pages. Tuohirulla 18:20, 13 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Hmm, you are telling them to do the opposite things at once and it should prove inconclusive. I am learning to handle this myself, after recognising that I don't need others to vilify for me or pretend that my innaccuracies are somehow glistening with truth and glamour. ScapegoatVandal 18:27, 13 Jun 2005 (UTC)
These problems should not be handled by edit wars, but by open discussion. You force your opinions in the articles all the time, and i have no time to undo them. Still this does not mean i am wrong, as you seem to think. Tuohirulla 18:31, 13 Jun 2005 (UTC)
Hahaha, talk about hypocrisy! You are doing just the same as you libeled me. I call for neutrality based upon the sources, since they are inconclusive. You prefer to call it absolute truth with a Midas touch! ScapegoatVandal 18:34, 13 Jun 2005 (UTC)
I request neutral intervention from other users. This can not be handled like this. Tuohirulla 18:36, 13 Jun 2005 (UTC)
All it takes, is for you to see it from an outer perspective. Ancestry.com doesn't think your Morton guy is Finnish, but Swedish along with most online sources! This is THE prevalent and commonest belief! Oh and another thing...don't casually call people racist in ideology. Don't play the race card and people will respect you far more than they do now. ScapegoatVandal 18:49, 13 Jun 2005 (UTC)
As an argument to prove your claims you tell me to look my "mongol eyes" at the mirror, and you say I user race card :) As an agrumuent of your comment you "analyze" my racial outlook, and you decide my opinions are caused by my racial features, and you say, I use race card. LOL!! Come on, you know you are a racist as well as anyone else who looks what you have wrote. Tuohirulla 19:02, 13 Jun 2005 (UTC)
Acknowledging the differences between us, does in fact show that I do not wear "rose-coloured-eyeglasses". I see things for what they are and don't bullshit anybody. I mince no words. Perhaps you can use this to your advantage when pushing your special brand of truth in articles. ScapegoatVandal 19:08, 13 Jun 2005 (UTC)
So you "know" my racial appearance. Gimme a break!!! I dont think you are worth to be discussed with. You should be bloced for your personal mockery and continuing vandalism Tuohirulla 19:16, 13 Jun 2005 (UTC)
I don't know all about you except what you tell me and that is speculative at best. It is indeed absolute fact that the Swedes introduced their phenotype to Finland by colonisation and also from Tornedalians intermarrying with local Swedes. Finland-Swedish carry this physique, far more than Ethnic Finns. This is general knowledge to anybody even with rudimentary educations from any Europeanistic society. What you call my vandalism is in fact an attempt to keep neutrality afloat. No need to get upset that the NPOV truth of history is contained within the blood that pumps your veins. Just because Uralics may have possibly lived in Arctic Europe for longer than other Europeans, doesn't make them White. We already know that much of early White European civilisation was concentrated in the Mediterranean Sea basin, which would count Uralic peoples out of the question. Blonde hair is not a native-natural trait of Finns, while Sweden-Finnish often are darker than regular Swedes. ScapegoatVandal 19:41, 13 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Trying to revert vandalism

It's still not working, just a link to hotniss.com, which I assume is either a prank site or a porn site.

Somebody trashed the Community Portal pages, so I tried to revert it, following the instructions I found at Wikipedia:How_to_revert_a_page_to_an_earlier_version but the revert doesn't seem to be taking. Weirdly, though, the markup text in the edit box seems to be the correct, reverted version, but that's not what's displaying on the page. Now I'm hoping that nobody sees my revert and thinks I'm a vandal. 69.160.182.110 11:23, 25 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Ditto 219.176.166.29 11:29, 25 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Ok, got it fixed. 219.176.166.29 11:34, 25 Feb 2005 (UTC)

What did you do differently, to make it work? I just noticed that not only did my reversion not take, but my edits aren't even showing up in the page history...(that's me at 11:23, forgot to log in)Rwlane 11:38, 25 Feb 2005 (UTC)

I just went one step further back in the history to do the reversion. And it took. Also, I think the history page may have been altered to remove vandalism. Which explains why, even though we were just trying to fix it, our edits also showed up as vandalism, and were subsequently removed. MikeDockery 03:41, 26 Feb 2005 (UTC)

I had to use the flush cache link (c.f. the link near the top of the page) Mr. Jones 17:48, 27 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Copyedit pages

Can the talk pages be shortened - getting long enough for the system to complain.

Could some form of date-system for queries etc be returned to - present system too cumbersome (especially when Wikipedia is slow, and there is limited time available).

A link to the encyclopedia listings again would be useful - I was going to extend some of them, but can't find them.

I've archived discussions from December 2004 and earlier. — J3ff 02:49, 7 Feb 2005 (UTC)
Suggest
Automated addition of some reminder warning to a talk page that is over some size thresh hold, and also have a category that they are in.
This addition to include both links to tutorial on how to do Here/New+Topic, Move, etc. and Date that the warning got added.
The category directory also show Date of addition, and number of times that page has been accessed, so the most popular that are too large, might get some help.

AlMac 5 July 2005 09:38 (UTC)

I'm not sure where to post this...

there is someone, they don't have a username, just IP address...they're putting inappropriate language under different articles...i've seen one under the St. Valentine article. (I was trying to find out some info on St. Valentine and up pops this curse word message!) i'm not sure what to do, or where to post this. i'm sorry if this disscussion doesn't fit under a community portal comment.

The Wiki way to report this is to post the user's IP address on the Wikipedia:Vandalism in progress#Current alerts page. (You just edit the page like any other.) There's a template you can copy that shows you how to format the new entry. An administrator will see your entry and take appropriate action. By the way, on Wiki, it's usual to sign your discussion posts by putting in four tildes, like this: ~~~~
And welcome to WIkipedia!
Atlant 01:47, 20 Feb 2005. (UTC)

Why the black boxes?

Should we dump those? Looks pretty horrid. I know I can change it meself, but I'm wondering if htere's a reason for them? --62.255.64.9 03:53, 21 Feb 2005 (UTC)

It seems someone recently included an extra variable to the {{opentask}} and {{totd}} templates to specify the background colour. This user neglected to actually specify the background colour on this page after making the change, which caused the templates to render an unreadable black. I've specified a white background colour, which should make things readable again. -- Hadal 04:10, 21 Feb 2005 (UTC)
I did that. What browser are you using? Not specifying it resulted in the default to me. 119 04:13, 21 Feb 2005 (UTC)
IE (yes, laugh if you will). It's not the best browser, but a significant number of surfers use it. That's why I keep it installed; to make sure any changes I make won't crap things up. You made your changes to those templates without any prior discussion; this was improper. I can't easily test on other browsers, but without specifying the variable the templates render with a black background colour. So, on every page featuring the templates without a specified variable, they're now unreadable to a sizeable portion of users. This is why it's important to discuss non-trivial changes to major templates before making those changes. I've half a mind to undo your edits, but I hope you might do so voluntarily. -- Hadal 04:21, 21 Feb 2005 (UTC)
Having identified a problem that affects a 'major template', you're just sitting on your hands hoping it will be fixed? I didn't know there was a problem, I've now fixed the problem. A friendly reminder that you shouldn't order or lecture. 119 04:31, 21 Feb 2005 (UTC)
I would have reverted immediately, but I wasn't aware your changes were undiscussed until after I fixed the rendering on this page (which is the most visiible page using the templates). Fixing one's own mistakes is a good learning experience, I've found. As for "lecturing" you: I'm sorry if my perceived tone bothered you (it was not intended to be hostile), but without pointing out your faux pas, you may easily have repeated it in future. We all make mistakes; we can only hope to learn from them. -- Hadal 04:43, 21 Feb 2005 (UTC)

More COTW's

Has anyone ever wondered why only the main COTW is featured. I think we could add under that just a short list of the other COTW's (there are really only about three others that are active) and their current articles. I think this would give them more attention and spark interest, not to mention the overall goal which is to improve the articles. Any suggestions? --Dmcdevit 04:39, 21 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Looking for suitable templates to use, I noticed that there is no link to Wikipedia:Template messages on the Community Portal; only Wikipedia:Boilerplate text is listed. The latter page seems to be deprecated and suggests using the former instead. Shouldn't the link therefore be updated to point to the Template message page instead? --Plek 00:10, 27 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Added: I just discovered that the "Custom messages" link actually points to the Wikipedia:Template messages page (via a redirect)! That's rather confusing. How about deleting the "Boilerplate text" link and rename "Custom messages" to "Template messages"? --Plek 00:15, 27 Feb 2005 (UTC)

more Things To Do?

Has anyone ever thought of adding the Countering Systemic Bias Open Tasks to the "Things to do" section? Especially since they are discontinuing the CSBCOTW, so it will no longer be on the COTW section. It looks like this. --Dmcdevit 04:13, 13 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Okay I boldly did it. Whatcha all think? --Dmcdevit 04:58, 21 Apr 2005 (UTC)
There's some excess angle brackets at the top of the template. I took a quick look and couldn't see where they were coming from. Apart from that, it looks good.-gadfium 05:35, 21 Apr 2005 (UTC)
The Community portal should be at least remotely aware that there is an Independant WikiProject Community with a plan to liberate this portal toward a broader context via Community hash being developed. You should join this project.
There is also a place called WikiProjects that appears not on Things To Do. . Just thought someone here should know. Wikipedia is intended to be open. Thanks Quinobi 4 July 2005 09:58 (UTC)

Proposal: Wikimedia Collaboration of the Week

I have started a page on Meta for a Wikimedia-wide collaboration of the week: m:Wikimedia COTW. As most of you will know, Wikimedia is the non-profit organization that operates Wikipedia. It also operates many other sister projects: Wiktionary, Wikisource, Wikiquote, Wikibooks, Wikinews, Wikispecies, the Wikimedia Commons, and the Meta-Wiki itself, which is used for cross-project coordination, documentation, brainstorming, etc.

Many of these projects need more exposure even within our community. Furthermore, there are tasks which all projects would benefit from which simply do not get done. An example of this is the MediaWiki documentation on Meta, which is out of date and poorly structured. Another example would be an inter-project collaboration, e.g. "add appropriate Wikinews links to current events coverage and write articles for events that don't have Wikinews aricles yet".

The Wikimedia Collaboration of the Week is an attempt to focus the energy of the community on one such task every week, similar to the regular Wikipedia:Collaboration of the Week.

I would like to replace the existing Tip of the Day box on the portal with the box below. The reason is that, ever since I stopped updating the TOTD, it has been very poorly maintained (the last "tip of the day" is from February 16). True, that could be changed, but I'm not sure how valuable the section is in any case. It may be more useful to spend the energy on structuring our help so people don't have to read tips to find random goodies.

So, here is what I would like the first Wikimedia COTW to look like:


The Wikimedia Collaboration of the Week is an attempt to get the Wikimedia community to join forces in tackling problems that affect all our projects, and to rise exposure of little-known or recently launched projects like Wikispecies and Wikinews, as well as of Wikimedia as a whole. You can now make suggestions and vote on what the first COTW should be.

The text would obviously be changed once the first COTW has been chosen. The idea is that a similar box would go on practically all the Wikimedia projects (though not necessarily on the Community Portal).--Eloquence* 23:54, Mar 18, 2005 (UTC)

I would like it if the English Wikipedia participated in this. silsor 03:24, Mar 19, 2005 (UTC)

Urgent help needed

I need help! Someone has redirected my talk page to a pornographic image. Can someone fix this for me? → JarlaxleArtemis 00:21, Mar 30, 2005 (UTC)

Shortcut?

Is there some reason the Community Portal doesn't have a shortcut as almost all major pages do? Surely this is one of the most common. --Dmcdevit 04:32, 21 Apr 2005 (UTC)

It's in the left-hand side menu (in the default MonoBook skin), so it probably doesn't need one. -- Curps 04:55, 21 Apr 2005 (UTC)
Oh duh! (you mean we don't have a shortcut to the Main Page?) :) Disregard that. --Dmcdevit 04:57, 21 Apr 2005 (UTC)


Updating entries

Can we please have a "latest entries" as well as "old entries" link - as otherwise gets too fiddly to add requests for development, queries etc.


Reporting vandalism

AlistairMcMillan is continualy removing sections of the Prometheus Page http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Prometheus_class_starship

He has been told to stop repeatedly and its been pointed out the information he is removing is canon and he has no position to remove it.

-Alyeska

It isn't vandalism, it's a content dispute. The term "canon" has no established meaning on Wikipedia, which is an encyclopedia and not a fan site. Please continue to discuss the matter with this user, who as far as I can see is offering perfectly reasonable arguments supporting his removals. Perhaps a good compromise would be to have a separate section for specifications and the like which are from sources that are not considered canon, or are disputed. --Tony Sidaway|Talk 14:37, 26 Apr 2005 (UTC)
I've tried to suggest a compromise on this issue. We can hope that this will stop the edit war Bluap 15:54, 13 May 2005 (UTC)

Updates page

Can we please have the link to the relevant pages again - I want to put some queries etc on. If there is no such page, I (and others) will find other things to do.

Conjuntos

Speedy deletes

Far out!!! Speedys are taking forever to be deleted tonight. netbux has been around for about half an hour! i mean i wrtoe a good article about netbux, and it got deleted via vfd. which i'm cool about - but then some bad guy goes and writes a crappy ad for netbux, using a referal number. plus there is a heap of other shit on speedy that hasn't been deleted yet. we need more admins from Aus, cause they can be on wiki about now, its like 6 oclock here. THE KING 07:58, 1 May 2005 (UTC)

Feel free to remove the referral number when this happens. If the article is constantly recreated, then we may have to have a protected redirect to pyramid scheme, as you or someone else suggested, but we try to avoid having protected pages.-gadfium 08:31, 1 May 2005 (UTC)

Help?

could someone talk to me? I have... I guess the equivalent of an Apple Pie recipe, that I want to put on Wikipedia. I read everything, but I'm still not sure where I should be editing, or if I need a new category. I have 1 original source and 2 primary sources, I also have 50 anti-sources (sources that confirm that said source exists and is possible, and are radically against the existance or knowledge of my chosen interest.) because of this my exact topic of interest is nearly impossible to find any documentation about on the internet, and because of the culture surrounding it's development, I cannot find any books or published reference material directly on it.

-SkaldSircha

responded at SkaldSircha.

Current Events page redirected

The main Current events page has been redirected to Weird events by User:Shade1. Help? Rlw 00:08, May 13, 2005 (UTC)

It was moved back shortly after your post. Thanks for reporting it, but the most appropriate place to report such vandalism is at Vandalism in progress. You can also undo most vandalism yourself, see How to revert. For a page move, you have to move the page back to the original name.-gadfium 01:40, 13 May 2005 (UTC)
Thanks. I have reverted vandalism in the past, but was unsure how to revert a redirect. I was afraid moving the page back would cause an infinite redirect or other weirdness. Rlw 16:37, May 13, 2005 (UTC)

Airport on Collaboration of the Week

As grand poobah of Wikipedia:WikiProject Airports, I recently listed airport on Wikipedia:Collaboration of the Week. This article is about to fall off the page due to lack of votes, beaten by an article on ancient rome. You know what to do Burgundavia (✈ take a flight?) 22:44, May 13, 2005 (UTC)

Deleted everything, it won't come back

Just to see if it would let me, I cut everything from this page. It did, so then I pasted it back. But it didn't take. The source shows the change but it isn't showing up.

Is there any restriction on taking this page's format to a public domain wiki? The page in question is http://libertarianwiki.org/wiki/index.php?title=Libertarian_Wiki:Community_Portal , and while I'd be more than willing to provide whatever credit is necessary, the founder seems pretty adamant about wanting to avoid "infecting" his wiki, which is understandable I suppose. -- PhilipR 00:10, 23 May 2005 (UTC)

Updating Wikipedia

Can we have some more of the lists of pages (including the encylopediac listing) to be updated variously leading off the community portal page? The more pointers to gaps and omissions the quicker they can be resolved.

I have noticed with some of the French language canton entries the map and the information box overlap, obliterating part of the former. Can "someone" (who knows more about layouts than me) rejig them please.

Format

I think that the COTW information should be moved to the left side of the page. Phoenix2 20:44, 23 May 2005 (UTC)


Requests for changes

Can someone put a link to requests for updates/rendering into Wikistandard etc back into the community portal area: and put Hautefaye onto it. I do not have the time at present to turn it into the correct standard.

Wikipedia:WikiProject Missing encyclopedic articles

Is there any way we can advertise the newly created but very important Wikipedia:WikiProject Missing encyclopedic articles on this page? thanks Bluemoose 21:48, 11 Jun 2005 (UTC)

I put it in at the bottom.--Zxcvbnm 12:01, 19 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Nooks and corners of Wikipedia that should be frequented

I found out about the WP:NAC here at Community Portal. I don't know how I would have found otherwise. Can we get it back or was it removed for good reason? hydnjo talk 20:50, 21 Jun 2005 (UTC)

It was removed because it gets very little use, is poorly updated, and the Community Portal was piling up with too many of different people's pet projects in the featured boxes, so some had to be dropped. I've suggested that this be merged with Wikipedia:Goings-on, as the two have similar functionality now and combining them would leave fewer pages that need to be maintained. --Michael Snow 05:39, 22 Jun 2005 (UTC)

IP blocked?

I'm not sure if this is the right place to ask, but I've been at 211.58.237.50 for the past few months uploading anywhere from ten to a hundred articles a day (on Wiktionary too) and suddenly it looks like I can't access anything Wiki-related through that number. Anywhere I can check to see what's going on? PS this is a Korean IP.

No this isn't the place to ask, I am not sure either, maybe the village pump? Phoenix2 03:03, 23 Jun 2005 (UTC)
Blocked IP addresses and users can be found here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Ipblocklist Leenewton 3 July 2005 11:54 (UTC)
The right place to ask is Wikipedia:Village pump (technical), and if you cannot get to any of the projects it's not a blocked user (since the blocks on the projects are independent). Either it's been blocked at the firewall level (unlikely and it's not on the list), or there is a network connectivity issue. --cesarb 3 July 2005 14:30 (UTC)

Spanish translation

Why does the spanish translation project get such a prominent place? Am I missing something? r3m0t talk 15:00, Jun 24, 2005 (UTC)

  • Collaborations of the week have always gotten a prominent place on the Community portal, because that's what Wikipedia is all about. (Most other announcements on this page are static, some outdated and in boring list format.) On the contrary, all collaborations should get better and more prominent space on this page.--Fenice 15:12, 24 Jun 2005 (UTC)
  • Someone took the time to create a nice template that can be displayed next to the improvement drive template. If you would like templates for the other collaborations they can be created, but in the end not all of them would be displayed on the CP page.
    --File:PhoenixSuns 100.pngPhoenix2 02:05, 26 Jun 2005 (UTC)
    • But why the Spanish one? Actually, I can answer that - one of the people from the project decided to give it a more prominent place. Never mind that it is just one of 20 or so topical/regional collaborations. In fact, I previously removed it and now it's recieved a prominent place again. I don't know why, but this really annoys me. How about a simple rotation system? Then, a new one can be there every day. Then again, the large "Open Tasks" cell means that people have to scroll down to see it anyway, and the effectiveness is highly reduced. r3m0t talk 16:04, July 21, 2005 (UTC)

Village Pump

How are people supposed to find the Village Pump now? Kaldari 1 July 2005 17:31 (UTC)

Yup. Fixed it. Soundguy99 5 July 2005 16:27 (UTC)

What is the Village Pump, anyways? --Simple Man 6 July 2005 02:28 (UTC)

The Village Pump "is used to discuss the technical issues, policies, and operations of Wikipedia." El_C 6 July 2005 02:32 (UTC)

General discussion

Is there a "village pub" or commons area for editors just to chat with each other about their efforts and love of writing and editing on Wikipedia? I wanted to brag about getting up to 100 edits in my first week here, but this doesn't seem to be the appropriate place for that. (Ooops...sorry!) DavidH July 6, 2005 04:25 (UTC)

The Wikipedia:IRC chat room? r3m0t talk 15:58, July 21, 2005 (UTC)

African Collaboration of the Week

I'm interested in starting an African COTW. Anyone interested in helping with the launch? Wikipedia:African Collaboration of the Week Revolución 7 July 2005 00:46 (UTC)

  • I'll help although I will be gone soon. (The 12th or 13th not really sure). I don't know how much I will be able to contribute as I am finding myself overwhelmed trying to edit, the COTWs,USSCOTW,USNCOTW,BioCOTW,PLCOtW,UKCOTF(depending on topic), and will on teh next month topic the LDSCOTW . I can help with its creation if you want. Falphin 7 July 2005 01:10 (UTC)

Science Collaboration of the Week

I've resurrected the old Science Collaboration of the week, given it new templates, a voting system, a nomination system, and a history page. I guess it could be considered new since it never got off the ground in the first place, partly, I'm guessing from the lack of the forementioned. WP:SCOTW Toothpaste 7 July 2005 08:29 (UTC)

This page needs to be protected

Due to the large amounts of vandalism I feel that this page should be protected. Alan Liefting 10:20, 17 July 2005 (UTC)

I would second that...Key information pages need to be protected Tim Graff 14:20, July 17, 2005 (UTC)
Then how would we update it? Key information pages need to be updated.--Fenice 14:24, 17 July 2005 (UTC)
Could the information be automatically transferred from other locations like the main page? Or do we just accept that there will be the occasional village member or visitor who, for whatever psychotic reason, must destroy rather than build up? Thank God for all the people who participate in this project with good intentions. Wikipedia would never have become what is today. Tim Graff 14:43, July 17, 2005 (UTC)
The kaey information on this page caould be updated by administrators. Alan Liefting 08:07, 18 July 2005 (UTC)
As an adsministrator who would be able to edit the page either way, I think this is a bad idea. We need as many hands as possible to work on the Community Portal; if it's just admnins I fear updates may lag seriously. Anyway, the Community Portal is not the Main Page; the Main Page is our face to the world, while the Community Portal is just our face to ourselves-- it's not a tragedy if it gets vandalized sometimes, that just proves it's an open wiki. It would also set quite an unfortunate precedent to protect this page-- how many more pages other than the Main Page would then be found equally deserving of protection?--Pharos 18:43, 19 July 2005 (UTC)

Where is the page? --Sourduck 15:52, 19 July 2005 (UTC)


How to set up a vote

A few times I have seen disputes settled by a vote. But I can't find information on what procedure to follow to set-up a vote. If such a procedure has been written-out, it should be in the 'How to resolve conflicts' section. On the other hand, if matters should be settled by some other means instead of a vote, that should be explained somewhere. Ravenswood 16:08, July 25, 2005 (UTC)

Wikification week?

I've heard some of the other-language projects occasionally declare periods of collaboration on particular backlogs. Several people on en seem to have proposed that we do such a thing, but not much has come of these suggestions. Our wikification backlog seems like a good candidate, since it's gotten quite large, and almost anyone can participate, whether or not they're familiar with article content. So, would anyone object if I added this box to the top of the Community Portal for the appropriate period? Feel free to improve it if you like. -- Beland 04:05, 28 July 2005 (UTC)

The ongoing maintenance collaboration is the backlog of articles to have bot-modified external links checked.

We need your help to completely eliminate this backlog in the coming weeks.

I moved the code to Template:wiki-week (which is what is now shown above), and am adding it to the portal now. -- Beland 00:34, 31 July 2005 (UTC)

Images

could anyone explain why non-commercial and by permission images are being deleted?

See Wikipedia:Image_copyright_tags#Rationale. -- Beland 00:53, 31 July 2005 (UTC)

African COTW

Please contribute. Revolución 03:29, 30 July 2005 (UTC)


The African Collaboration of the Month has been discontinued .

Every month a different Africa-related topic, stub or non-existent article was chosen.
The aim of the collaboration was to improve articles to featured article status.

Want to restart this collaboration? See the project page and collaborations page

Next wiki-week

starting a discussion as to what will be the next wiki week. Circeus 00:47, July 31, 2005 (UTC)

Category:Articles to be merged is also absolutely overflowing, and I was pondering whether or not it should be the subject of the next declaration. It does take a bit longer to merge articles, though, and sometimes having some clue about the subject helps. Plus "merge month" is pleasantly alliterative. But a week might be enough time to devote to a single cause. I was also wondering whether there should only be one "wiki week" per month, to give people a rest. Kind of like how there's only one "bug day" a week for bugzilla collaboration. There are some other backlogs that I can think of, like cleanup or expansion. But I think it would be most efficient to wait on those until someone has a chance to go through the existing lists and purge the entries that have already been fixed. Requested articles of one kind or another might be good for the second-next wiki week though...I think it's more important to tidy up the articles we already have before making new ones. Especially because we want to avoid the duplication of effort which results from having two versions of the same content sitting around. -- Beland 02:35, 31 July 2005 (UTC)

Why don't we create a page similar to the Collaboration of the Week, where suggestions on wiki-weeks (If that's what you call it) are voted and picked in the end of the week? CG 08:06, August 1, 2005 (UTC)

I actually made this proposal at Wikipedia:Village pump (proposals)#Wikipedia-related collaboration. Maybe we should continue the discussion there? Circeus 14:39, August 1, 2005 (UTC)
OK, I'm starting Wikipedia:Maintenance collaboration. See you there. Maurreen (talk) 04:04, 3 August 2005 (UTC)

History of South America CotW

The CotW is apparently History of South America, but the description still points to last week's South America article. I'm not sure if this is something an Admin needs to fix. :) — RJH 15:15, 3 August 2005 (UTC)

Ease of use

It should be easier for users, new and old, to find the information they need. And we should not delete anybody's questions without trying to answer them.

Do not shoot the messenger, fix the problem. Be helpful, not bureaucratic and stubborn.

I am willing to manage the Wikipedia:help desk, if it's a question of manpower and time. Uncle Ed 14:56, August 8, 2005 (UTC)

I'm not quite sure what you are referring to. Could you explain what the problem is, because your comment seems a little cryptic to me. What do you mean manage the help desk? It's doing fine, basically all the questions get answered pretty quickly. So I'm confused why you asked a question here and not the help desk. I see this as more of a reference guide for help and collaboration. After all, we don't go asking questions about style on the MoS page itself. Of course if someone has a real question, I don't think it should be reverted without comment, it could be answered, or at least referred to the help desk. Other than that, could you tell me what changes you have in mind? (I do agree with you about helpfulness not stubbornness). Dmcdevit·t 21:51, August 8, 2005 (UTC)


Art/Architecture Collaberation of the week

Anyoe else think this would be a good idea? I don't have the skills or time to do this myself, but hopefully there'd be enough support that someone would be able to set this up. Richy 14:20, 12 August 2005 (UTC)