Wikipedia talk:Help desk

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[edit] Help Desk horizon

How many days prior to today do you think should remain before being archived? The reason for this question is so that the parameters for the upcoming archiving bot can set. This is not a "forever" decision but our best guess for a starting point. My own review indicates that there are virtually no responses to a question posed more than three days ago and so accordingly, I've removed (archived) all but three days prior. In a perfect world, there would be a deeper horizon that we'all could just skim through or ignore or just start from the bottom of the page and go up from there. In the real world however, the folks with less than optimal bandwidth (say, dial-up) are burdened with unnecessarily long load times and so we need to compromise between the two. I've posted this question at the HD so as to gather more input and have requested that comments be posted here. --hydnjo talk 22:42, 15 October 2006 (UTC)

It was confusing to see the message saying you have archived all the topics more than three days old, yet messages four days before that message were still there. Until WP gets better discussion software, there's no good answer. I might be on the computer, ask a question here, then not get back to my WP for another week. Should occasional users not ask for help? But keeping discussion around long enough for that is unwieldy. The bot should look at the timestamps from the ~~~~, and archive based on the most recent date in each thread. In theory, a discussion from a month ago could keep going that way, but that doesn't seem to be the way this page works, and if it does, what's wrong with it? As for the amount of time, I say three days from most recent message, but if you can only do it based on the age of the root of the thread it needs to be longer.-- Randall Bart <wiki@randallbart.com> 03:01, 18 October 2006 (UTC)
Time passes and I've added new date headers but archiving is still a work in progress so the page will lengthen. Your archiving suggestion has merit but I don't think that the archiving bot has the capability of examining the response timestamps. The bot would also be confounded by the lack of a timestamp on way too many questions and answers which is why it has been designed to key off of the date headers. --hydnjo talk 03:34, 18 October 2006 (UTC) addendum: The questions moved from the active HD are always available at the archives and I agree that there should be a provision for questions with persistance beyond the archiving horizon. Perhaps a Previous questions still active section could be added at the top of the page which is ignored by the bot and is dealt with manually (both added-in and archived). --hydnjo talk 04:10, 18 October 2006 (UTC)
I think the bot was set to 'three days from most recent' last I checked. --ais523 09:49, 18 October 2006 (UTC)
Yes it is and that seems like a reasonable compromise. Page length is resonable and haven't noticed any activity on the date to be archived next. --hydnjo talk 03:42, 4 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Wikipedia:Why was my page deleted?

Not directly related to the help desk, but between the number of times this question comes up here, and the sorts of editors likely to congregate here, I'd like a moment to announce that a new Wikipedia page has been created to try and help editors figure these things out. It was just made tonight -- if anybody sees ideas for improvement, please don't hesitate to be bold and help beef it up a bit! Luna Santin 06:51, 10 November 2006 (UTC)

Mine too my MonoMetro page was deleted why? I have seen worst stubs here and I think its a subject Wikipedia should cover, Shouldn't more time be given for improvements rather then these hasty deletes?Oxyman 22:11, 6 December 2006 (UTC)
I don't think this entry was meant as an opportunity to vent about deleted pages. You'd be better off visiting the link and perhaps discussing it on the talk page there. Kesh 00:40, 7 December 2006 (UTC)
Why was I labeled sock puppet and my page defaced?
Hi - I think what's going on here is simply outrageous. I was slandered as a sock puppet and my page defiled by some idiot. Now, is there a due process of any sort or someone with powers of devinity (why? who?) can just brand other users with slanderous titles and place sock puppet tags on their pages? I am using Roobit user name in English and Russian wikipedia and only English wikipedia has been affected. I am not a sock puppet of anyone, I never used proxy and I register and write from my own email address. What is taking place here is absolute disgrace. If someone dislikes your views, he can just brand you a sock puppet? Do you need a crowd of tame users who express identical opinions or have no opinions on their own? How has the power to slander other users in this manner and what is the remedy against it/him? —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Roobit (talk • contribs) 06:19, January 3, 2007 (UTC)
Again, this is not the place to discuss this. See my link above. -- Kesh 20:46, 3 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] RefDeskBot Archives: Caution

Cross-posted on Wikipedia talk:Reference desk

Just a couple of things to look out for to ensure that the archiving goes through with smoothly. There are a couple things that will confuse the bot at the moment, but they're easy to prevent if we're paying attention.

  1. Make sure every question has a proper title.
    Do not allow non-titled text to sneak in below the date header. If somebody adds a question without a title tag, give it one. Not doing so will currently make the archives pretty messy.
  2. Make sure the date headers are done properly, i.e. = November 13 =, just to be on the safe side.
  3. Do not change the number of days transcluded, or move around the links to the transcluded pages. If you want to suggest an extension or shortening of the transclusion time, talk to Martin so that the bot doesn't get confused again.
  4. Be careful when restoring pages after a blanking so as to restore it in exactly the same manner.
  5. Add <nowiki></nowiki> tags or codify HTML/scripts in article titles to keep the archive indexes from screwing up. Normal Wikilinks are OK.

If a couple people keep an eye out for these things there should be no problems : )!  freshofftheufoΓΛĿЌ  11:11, 10 November 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Suggested new step for asking question

Something I think might be useful to add in the instructions for people asking a question: "If you are asking a question relating to a specific article, please name that article in your question so that the context is understood." Probably somewhere close to the currently bolded instruction. Confusing Manifestation 13:41, 23 November 2006 (UTC)

That might be an idea - a fair few requests come through from people, without them mentioning the specific situation they're talking about. But on the other hand, a 10-second search through their contributions will usually give you the relevant info. I don't really mind either way about an addition. Trebor 16:10, 23 November 2006 (UTC)
It's not a problem except when people talk about deleted articles; it's important to have a reference in such cases, because the contribs won't show anything up. It would save a small amount of time even for bluelinks, though. --ais523 13:31, 24 November 2006 (UTC)
I came here to suggest the same and saw it was already discussed. Some people unprecisely mention existing articles they have not edited. Editors waste time searching and may not guess right (recent example). I think the instruction should ask for "the exact article name" (and maybe ask for [[ArticleName]]). PrimeHunter 14:38, 29 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Redesign

Could anyone check the blue box at the top of the page? I mean that the text is not clear. --Meno25 04:27, 28 November 2006 (UTC)

And do what with it? (I amssuming you are talking about the archives icon). ViridaeTalk 04:28, 28 November 2006 (UTC)
The problem is that the following sentence is not clear: Ask questions about how to use Wikipedia. (Note that I am using Firefox under Windows XP). The word Wikipedia overlaps with the two words questions and about. Maybe we need to use a smaller font. --Meno25 08:01, 29 November 2006 (UTC)
It broke for me as well, but only when I set my browser to an abnormally large font size. I've fixed it (hopefully) by putting a bit of CSS in that only applies when it wraps to the second line; does it work for everyone now? --ais523 09:31, 29 November 2006 (UTC)
On my browser it looks fine too me. — Seadog 22:48, 5 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Proper criteria

What is the standard protocol for adding a website to an article as an external link without being accused of spamming wikipedia, vandalizing articles, or infringing upon previously external links that administrators have paced within the article to promote their own sites, and yes I can prove that to be the case!

Thanks in advance to unbiased/impartial editors, 69.167.97.81 03:01, 8 December 2006 (UTC)

Here's the process step-by-step as I would do it.
  1. Check the article and your link to make sure that your link is relevant. If it isn't, don't bother.
    • The primary Wikipedia guideline exists at Wikipedia:External links
    • You can ask on the talk page to see if other editors would mind the addition of the external link.
    • If possible, use the link with a <ref>{{cite web}}</ref> setup to reference a statement in the article. This usage is ideal if used appropriately.
  2. Add the article in the external links section with the format [http://www.example.com/foo descriptive caption] "any notes"
  3. Use a good edit summary describing your edit.
By the way, I recommend that you get an account - logged-in users are generally treated with more respect in regard to potential vandalism. Nihiltres 03:25, 8 December 2006 (UTC)
If you can prove links were added for self-promotion, do so on the article's talk page. Regardless, even if you can prove others have done so, your own links must be able to stand on their own merit. Kesh 04:01, 8 December 2006 (UTC)
I shall create an account, yet this in this situation I have been perceived as a spammer, which is utterly rediculous because I had nothing to gain by requesting to add the external link that was ultimatly never included.
Bottom line, I understand you people deal with a massive volume of spammers, vandals, hate propagandists, and self-promoters on wikipedia, yet in your crusaide of fairness you crucify honest inexperienced contributers who make a mere rookie error. I want to know what makes certain individuals "Wikipolice" while many of thier edits to articles clearly convey biases and "POV" slants, while the newbies are verbally abused for seeking consensus on adding a pertianant link to an article.
There is a trend upon wikipedia of persecuting descent people while facilitating blatent racists to "doctor up" the image of notorious bigots. Just review the past 500 edits to the David Duke biography alone. Constant revisions, omission of factual information, and the revision of truth results in a constant edit war among three parties, the xenophobes, excessive liberals, rational people who find valid evidence of a Ku Klux Klan history and still find themself in a debate whether or not David Duke should be placed in a Ku Klux Klan catagory.
It is almost humorous to me that you waste your time chasing me for posting messages on talk pages, while wikipedia is being used as a vehical to spread nonsensical and unmistakable latent hate speech.
Sorry for the rant, yet I think it is time some of you Wikipedia aficianatos utalize your talents to combat an occourance of diproportional misuse as opposed to hollering at me for doing what I thought was right.
P.S. I would greatly appreciate a realistic responce instead of a one sentence replay telling me I am a bumbling idiot for posting this material here.
Thank you,
  • 69.167.97.81 08:20, 8 December 2006 (UTC)
You seem to be under a misunderstanding. People tend to edit what they're interested in. Some folks who were watching the article you attempted to add a link to felt it was inappropriate and deleted it. They then noticed you had added the same link to many other articles, which is a tactic most often seen by spammers. No one personally attacked you, but they were concerned that your behavior appeared to be something we've seen a lot here.
Second, controversial articles such as the David Duke one are going to attract people who argue vehemently for either side, leaving actual neutral parties acting as referrees and janitors to clean up the mess. However, just because controversial articles exist does not mean people drop everything and concentrate on those. There are thousands of people editing Wikipedia, and those who are more knowledgable about the controversial topics are better suited to monitoring them for vandalism. As an added point, WIkipedia does not censor subjects. Unfortunately, this does allow bigoted and racist elements to exist in articles, as those items are documented and part of history (as in the case of David Duke). We have to take the good with the bad here, while maintaining a neutral point of view.
Lastly, your own comments are rather impolite, which does not encourage others to help you. Talking about "wasting time" and misconstruing short answers as calling you an "idiot" are not conducive to dialogue.
I do hope you stick around and help contribute to Wikipedia. But, one of the first rules here is that you have to have a tough skin. People will edit your work, you will be criticized and some people will be rude. That's what happens when you get thousands of anonymous people working on the same project. Just stick with it, and I think you'll find it worthwhile. -- Kesh 19:24, 8 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Contributions missing

Hi, what happens if you contribute to an article created by someone else, and then someone deletes what you wrote with no justification? I wrote good information that was useful on an article, then someone else deleted it for no reason. This should be changed so that people can't do this. What can someone in my position do when this happens? Tkma 18:31, 18 December 2006 (UTC)

Hi. If you're referring to this edit, yes, the person should have given a reason for deletion in the edit summary. However, it was also unsourced, original research, giving undue weight, and was potentially meant more as a defammatory remark than a reasonable statement. Patstuarttalk|edits 21:40, 18 December 2006 (UTC)
As a note, this is a talk page to discuss the Help Desk, not the Help Desk itself. Also, if you feel that an edit was unwarranted or unclear, you can always ask that editor about it, or express your concerns on the article's talk page. —Keakealani 23:20, 18 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Questions about how to create pages

Since these are coming up quite a bit, I wanted to mention how (I think) we should be handling them.

It's best to link to Help:Starting a new page A.K.A. Help:creating a page for these questions. This eliminates redundancy and since there is a dedicated page for page creation instructions, it can be more robust and is likely to be quite current in reflecting any new changes to the way pages are created in the future. The tl;dr arguement exists, but my opinion is that anyone who was given the link to the information and can't be bothered to read enough of it to start a new page shouldn't be writing articles anyways, since they certainly won't familiarise themselves with our core content policies. BigNate37(T) 18:27, 20 December 2006 (UTC)

I'm pretty sure that's what most people are doing - whenever I see that question, I simply respond with ":See [[Help:Starting a new page]]". It would be cool if someone made a template, but since it's not a long thing to say, it's okay. It would be good to standardize what we say, but then people might assume we're bots rather than real people, which may reduce the helpfulness of the HD. —Keakealani 23:32, 20 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Archive

The help desk page needs archiving desperately. Queries from 17 December are still showing up. Are the bots not working anymore? — Lost(talk) 16:56, 28 December 2006 (UTC)

Again this is the case. Isn't there a bot to do this? − Twas Now ( talk • contribs • e-mail ) 07:23, 31 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Wikipedia Day Awards

Hello, all. It was initially my hope to try to have this done as part of Esperanza's proposal for an appreciation week to end on Wikipedia Day, January 15. However, several people have once again proposed the entirety of Esperanza for deletion, so that might not work. It was the intention of the Appreciation Week proposal to set aside a given time when the various individuals who have made significant, valuable contributions to the encyclopedia would be recognized and honored. I believe that, with some effort, this could still be done. My proposal is to, with luck, try to organize the various WikiProjects and other entities of wikipedia to take part in a larger celebrartion of its contributors to take place in January, probably beginning January 15, 2007. I have created yet another new subpage for myself (a weakness of mine, I'm afraid) at User talk:Badbilltucker/Appreciation Week where I would greatly appreciate any indications from the members of this project as to whether and how they might be willing and/or able to assist in recognizing the contributions of our editors. Thank you for your attention. Badbilltucker 19:46, 30 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Scrolling TOC

Could we revert back to a standard table of contents? That scrolling version is annoying. User:Zoe|(talk) 21:11, 1 January 2007 (UTC)

Or if it could at least be not quite as narrow, so that the titles of each section fit on one line. -- Natalya 21:18, 1 January 2007 (UTC)
I agree, what was wrong with how it used to be? Trebor 21:20, 1 January 2007 (UTC)

I agree and have commented out the special TOC code. BigNate37(T) 17:40, 2 January 2007 (UTC)

Thank you for taking care of that! -- Natalya 23:02, 2 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Is a movie article too long?

Question moved to Wikipedia:Help desk#Is a movie article too long?. BigNate37(T) 01:19, 3 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] What do these colored numbers mean?

I think we should be adding Help:Watching pages#What do the colored numbers mean? to our Very Frequently Asked Questions. Not to mention maybe just displaying it in big bold letters on the Help desk itself. We're getting a lot of questions about this. -- Kesh 00:28, 6 January 2007 (UTC)

I've done just that.Harryboyles 01:26, 6 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Dates

Is there meant to be a bot updating the dates everyday? Simply south 13:50, 6 January 2007 (UTC)

Dates where? Fethroesforia 14:19, 6 January 2007 (UTC)
The main dates for each day. I mean the titles. I have been splitting up the page when it moves from the query on, for example January 5 to January 6, so i have placed the titles there. Simply south 16:46, 6 January 2007 (UTC)
The section dates are supposed to be added each day, here and at the RDs, at about midnght (UTC) by RefDeskBot. The bot is the creation of and operated by Martinp23 but seems to have become a bit cranky lately (the bot, not Martin). I'll call it to his attention and in the meantime please add the dates manually. BTW, the same bot was also tasked to archive the oldest section at the same time as adding the newly dated section. --hydnjo talk 19:34, 6 January 2007 (UTC)
Yes - due to increasing system instability causing all sorts of strange stuff to occur, I had to take all my bots off the Linux box and only run them on the dev PC. Unfortunately, I'm not awake at 0000Z sometimes, so it doesn't always run. Fortunately, I've not got a different dsitro installed on the box, and it should be plain sailing in future (or fairly so - my interent may decide to break half way through the archival... (or Wikipedia will)) Martinp23 11:56, 7 January 2007 (UTC)
Oh yes - the bot adds the dates (the most visible sign of its presence) but it also fully archives every desk (and it's just finished getting up to date (yay!)). Martinp23 11:57, 7 January 2007 (UTC)
Wait, but i've been adding the dates - at least here and Ref Desk Misc up until January 7. Simply south 12:52, 7 January 2007 (UTC)
Are you in a time zone ahead of the bot? James086Talk | Contribs 13:18, 7 January 2007 (UTC)
(The bot is in GMT). Simply South - thanks for doing that - the bot has been down for a while due to hosting issues (it will, hopefully, work today). Just a general note to anyone adding date headers when/if the bot doesn't - please use a full date: = January 8 = - this makes it quicker for me to get the bot back online. Thanks, Martinp23 22:02, 8 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Shorthand and its deterioration of communication

I'd like to ask that the responders on the help desk avoid linking to policy and guideline pages by only referring to them by their abbreviations. I just read a response to a question that referred the questioner to WP:COI. If you mouseover this link, all that the browser will tell you is that it links to WP:COI. So if you had no idea what COI stands for, you still aren't any closer to an answer. You have to click on the link, go to the page, find out that it stands for Conflict of Interest, and finally you can go back to the original page to continue reading the response. So, to avoid this, you could link to things in the following ways:

Seeing as how this page is supposed to help newbies as well as experienced users with Wikipedia related questions, I don't see why everyone should be assumed to know what all of our abbreviations stand for. Dismas|(talk) 01:02, 9 January 2007 (UTC)

To pick up on your example, I don't think most people would understand what was meant by "conflict of interest" in the sense it's used at WP:COI unless they clicked on the link anyway, so I don't see this as a big problem. I try to do as you ask in my Help Desk responses myself because it makes them read better, but I also think exposure to some of these abbreviations (many of which will be encountered in other contexts here on Wikipedia, after all) is not necessarily a bad thing. Just my $0.02. --Tkynerd 01:12, 9 January 2007 (UTC)
I wonder if not understanding the abbreviations will make people more likely to click on the links and actually read a bit of the policies, which would be a big plus. delldot | talk 02:56, 9 January 2007 (UTC)
I'm inclined to agree. I'd almost say: cryptic abbreviations for the newbies (to lead them to the more detailed information they need), linked jargon for old hands. --Tkynerd 03:07, 9 January 2007 (UTC)
It is certainly always nice to pipe the link to give the title of the guideline page. -- Natalya 04:15, 9 January 2007 (UTC)
I'f I'm linked to anything, I open it in a different tab to read when I finish reading. I really don't think it's a problem, and the thought that it heightens curiosity is valid, in my opinion. I agree that piped links are good in most cases, but I don't think it's all that much of a hassle. *shrug* —Keakealani·?·!·@ 06:58, 9 January 2007 (UTC)

When answering Helpdesk questions, I normally pipe a link so that the WP: shortcut's used as the target, and a description of the page is written on the link. For instance, I might write "you might want to look at an essay about avoiding acronyms". There are a few cases where I use a lone abbreviation, in cases where I think it would be more useful; for instance, in response to something like "I can't remember the name of the page where you're supposed to report a vandal who's been warned" (the implied question implies that the user has been to the page before, and is just trying to find it again), I replied "WP:AIV", because the shortcut is more memorable than Wikipedia:Administrator intervention against vandalism, and also faster for the person who asked the question to type when going back to the page in future. Despite my personal answering tendencies, I also agree with what Keakealani says about this above (I tend to open in a new window when I'm linked to an abbreviation I don't understand). --ais523 10:14, 9 January 2007 (UTC)

I would normally have no problem with opening links in another tab or window... at home. I do quite a bit of editing at work and although I work for one of the largest technology companies in the world, the computers that we're allowed to use quite simply suck. And we're forced to use an old version of IE which doesn't have tabs. This put to my mind the home user who may not have the greatest connection/computer/broswer/computer apptitude and it would help them, and me, if the abbreviations were explained. I do agree with User:ais523 in that if a person basically describes the page that they're looking for, giving them the abbreviation is probably the best course of action in that case. Dismas|(talk) 10:21, 9 January 2007 (UTC)
Surprisingly, your situation is similar to mine. I'm using IE6 on a computer to which I don't have admin access (so I have no chance of installing another browser), and I don't have tabbed browsing. My browsing is mostly of the 'right click - open in new page' variety, and so I've had 6 windows open at once before (although that's nothing to my bot, which had 21 windows open at once trying to meet its edit rate on one occasion, so I had to slow down the edit rate). --ais523 10:26, 9 January 2007 (UTC)
I'm sympathetic to all the above arguments, both pro and con. One argument in favor of presenting the abbreviation is that it drives home to the user that this particular issue is so old hat that it has an abbreviation. I think that's a good message to send, although one sends it just as well by spelling out the link and giving the abbreviated link in parenthesis. It's good for the users to grasp that almost every problem they could experience on Wikipedia has been experienced and dealt with many times before by others, a detailed written record exists, and searching for it is practical and a good idea. I like to mention how I looked up an answer (for example, by searching on User:John Broughton/Editor's Index to Wikipedia, or searching the Help desk archive), possibly giving readers the proverbial fishing pole instead of just the fish. In the final analysis, however, questioners should be grateful they are getting free support, of whatever quality. Lots of companies charge good money for what we're doling out for free. If the user has to work a bit to decode an answer, that's perfectly acceptable if it saves the answerer a bit of time. The whole point here is to build an encyclopedia, and if people are going to do that, they had better learn how to look up the answers to their questions. Handing the entire answer to the questioner and leaving no work for him or her at all kind of stunts their relevant skill development, in my opinion. We need new users to learn how to navigate complex source material and generate answers, or they won't be much use to the encyclopedia project, where editors typically need to look up and juggle multiple references as they work on a page. --Teratornis 06:24, 15 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Date Error

Looks like the section headers for the Help desk page are messed up. It currently only runs up to January 10, though articles in that section are dated for the 11th. -- Kesh 00:17, 13 January 2007 (UTC)

At the moment, date headers are added manually, so they may not be added every day. I will go and correct that, but it's largely inevitable because it doesn't matter enough for people to religiously change them at midnight XD —Keakealani·?·!·@ 05:43, 14 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Wikispace

Maybe I should ask on the help desk, but is there a reason this is in the Wikipedia space instead of Help space? James086Talk | Contribs 05:40, 14 January 2007 (UTC)

The Help: namespace, as far as I know, is for articles telling people how to do things; also, they are usually copies of articles on MediaWiki. I don't know for sure, but I'd assumed that's why. Also, it makes more sense of WP:HD to be in the same namespace as WP:RD. —Keakealani·?·!·@ 05:42, 14 January 2007 (UTC)
Ok thanks, it just seemed a bit strange to me that it was WP: and I couldn't find anything in the archives. James086Talk | Contribs 06:00, 14 January 2007 (UTC)

Because the Help Desk is a Wikiproject, and not part of Wikipedia's documentation. — Kieff 06:13, 14 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Images

Hello, I am a new user. I was just wondering how you put pictures on articles? Thank you and I await your response so please respond soon. Radical3 00:22, 20 January 2007 (UTC)

This question was copied to the Help desk - please look for the response there. -- Rick Block (talk) 15:11, 20 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Template

I noticed that despite the gigantic headers, we still get a lot of reference desk type questions. What do folks think about creating a template, such as {{see RD}} to point them to the RD? It could have wording like this: "This page is for asking questions about how to edit Wikipedia. You may be able to get the answer to your question by using the search box or at the reference desk." I doubt many people would realize they're being templated, since most are not that familiar with WP practice. Thoughts? My appologies if this has been discussed before. delldot | talk 04:02, 22 January 2007 (UTC)

Yeah, that makes sense to me. Trebor 07:35, 22 January 2007 (UTC)
Have you tried Wikipedia's template {{RD1}}? It specializes in directing people to the place to answer knowledge questions, and will serve to answer any question in the universe (except a question about how to use Wikipedia, since that's what this Help Desk is for). Just type {{subst:RD1}}, write your signature, and save away. I hope this helps. --ais523 10:27, 22 January 2007 (UTC)
Hah! --Wooty Woot? contribs 06:36, 23 January 2007 (UTC)
There are actually three:
  • {{RD1}}, for general refernce desk
  • {{RD2}}, with the section of the reference desk as a qualifier to direct someone to a specific part of the reference desk
  • {{RD3}}, with an article as a qualifier, to direct them to a pertinent article or the reference desk.
-- Natalya 15:09, 22 January 2007 (UTC)
Ah, thanks, I should have done more research before posting. delldot | talk 06:15, 23 January 2007 (UTC)
No worries. :) Now more people will know about them, which is good. -- Natalya 18:10, 23 January 2007 (UTC)
For more information about usage, see Wikipedia:Help desk/RD tip. PrimeHunter 19:17, 23 January 2007 (UTC)


[edit] CSS|XHTML: Size, Border, and Background Color of Classed Templates

Would like a heads up on if it's possible to override a classed template (e.g., "infobox city") with a style attribute and not rewrite the entire table? If it's possible to add to a stylesheet, and because I'm still learning Wiki code, can you please explain how? Just want to change the table size, border and background color, but leave the rest of the formatting alone.FResearcher 12:14, 28 January 2007 (UTC)

template:infobox city uses CSS styles "infobox" and "infobox.geography", both defined in MediaWiki:Common.css. You can override these with your own CSS file (in a subpage of your user page), see Help:User style. This particular template sets its width in the template itself (not through a width in an external style definition), so I don't think you'll be able to change the width. Border and background color should be straightforward. For future reference, this sort of question should be on Wikipedia:Help desk, not on this page (this page is not the help desk, but a page for talking about the help desk). -- Rick Block (talk) 17:35, 28 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Color

I was thinking about changing the blue to a shade of green. I tested it out using the "Show Preview" button and it looked good. But before anyone changes it, I want to hear the opinion of other Wikipedians to help reach a consensus on what to do. Kamope · talk · contributions 20:46, 28 January 2007 (UTC)

PS: This is for the header, not the background. Kamope · talk · contributions 20:55, 28 January 2007 (UTC)

I like the look at the moment, with the box being much the same colour as the background. On the other hand, your change might look even better; what shade of green did you use? --ais523 10:35, 30 January 2007 (UTC)
Pale green. Kamope · talk · contributions 11:16, 30 January 2007 (UTC)
I think I prefer the current version; the green's a bit garish for my taste, and I like the colour-coordination behind the current version. --ais523 11:26, 30 January 2007 (UTC)
I think the current blue shade is used for all help related pages, it is seen at Help:Contents and WP:FAQ etc.--Commander Keane 03:58, 31 January 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Archive navigation again

Same problem as before on the reference desk, but this time for the help desk. Just letting everyone know. --WikiSlasher 08:31, 31 January 2007 (UTC) Here's an example --WikiSlasher 08:33, 31 January 2007 (UTC)

Also, the stuff older than a week should be archived. Where the bots at? − Twas Now ( talk • contribs • e-mail ) 11:18, 31 January 2007 (UTC)
RefDeskBot's owner seems to have lost Internet access, and so the bot has stopped operating. The archiving will have to be done by hand until the bot comes back on line. --ais523 09:13, 1 February 2007 (UTC)
I've now archived everything before January 29 by hand. (I don't do as good a job at it as the bot does, though). --ais523 09:39, 1 February 2007 (UTC)
The bot's back online now, on the toolserver (so no more major downtime :)). I'll take User:MartinBotII through the archives at some point to fix any broken headers and resovle navigation problems. Thanks, Martinp23 10:25, 6 March 2007 (UTC)
All archives have now been corrected through to October 12th when RefDeskBot first started on the Help Desk--VectorPotentialTalk 17:35, 6 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Vandalism repeated on the help desk

I'd like to post a note on the top of the help desk page that all reports of vandalism will be investigated and removed. If everyone who responds to messages acts uniformly, including notifying the reporter of the policy, we'll be able to show newbies how to revert and vandals they won't get an outlet here. What do you all think? Xiner (talk, email) 00:31, 6 February 2007 (UTC)

I tell such posters about WP:REVERT. We can't be a dumping ground for everything vandals put on Wikipedia. Xiner (talk, email) 01:33, 6 February 2007 (UTC)
As long as we don't discourage the vandalism from being reported. I'd rather it be reported here than not mentioned at all, because a new user doesn't feel comfortble/know what to do. -- Natalya 01:42, 6 February 2007 (UTC)
Well sure, they can still post it, it's just that I think we should we respond on the user talk page, check up on the affected page, then remove the post. Xiner (talk, email) 01:47, 6 February 2007 (UTC)

The reason I brought up this question is a number of posts I have seen here with a distinctive style of broken English and important but disorganized sounding credentials, like this one. I don't have time to go through the logs, but I intend to log here similar messages in the future. Xiner (talk, email) 17:32, 6 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Templates for answering commonly-asked questions

I've recently started answering a few questions on the Help desk, which I rather enjoy doing because it also helps me to learn more in the process. As a new user, I was impressed with the helpfulness of the replies to my own questions that I received here (not too long ago!), and also how quickly they were answered. I was actually under the impression that my questions were answered by a dedicated team of "official" Wikipedia staff members or something, and was quite surprised to later discover all are voluntary (it is, right?:)

Anyway, this might already be in place, but at Wikipedia:Help_desk/How_to_answer, there is mention of a template (Template:RD1) that can be used to quickly and easily refer a user asking a knowledge question to the Reference desk instead. This obviously happens pretty frequently and is handy to have available.

What would be your thoughts on creating additional templates, similar to Template:RD1, for use on the Help desk specifically for answering very frequently-asked questions in an agreed-upon, thorough-but-concise, civil-and-nice manner? Would there be any use for this? I'm thinking of things like "Please remember to sign your posts using four tildes"; or general editing help; or anything else that might come in useful as an alternative for having to re-type very common, short answers.

My idea is to perhaps create a new template category for the Help desk, and add new templates there as we go along. Your comments would be appreciated. —XhantarTalk 09:05, 6 February 2007 (UTC)

For your interest, there are three Reference desk templates:
  • {{RD1}}, for general refernce desk
  • {{RD2}}, with the section of the reference desk as a qualifier to direct someone to a specific part of the reference desk
  • {{RD3}}, with an article as a qualifier, to direct them to a pertinent article or the reference desk.
I'm not so sure about creating a host of other templates for answering questions on the Help Desk, however. The Reference Desk templates are good because we're not giving an answer, but rather directing the user to the appropriate location to answer their question. It's not really a personable thing. When giving answers to valid questions, however, it's always nice to give a personal response, no matter how short or simple it may seem to us. Of course such templates would be polite, but it's not really the same as an editor answering the questions, and it doesn't really seem like it would take all that much time for the trouble it is worth.
Perhaps there are questions similar to ones belonging at the Reference Desk that I am overlooking. Did you have anything particular in mind?
FYI, there is a template about signing posts to talk pages at {{Tilde}}. -- Natalya 15:18, 6 February 2007 (UTC)
Thanks for your input. I agree that a personal response is better, and suspect that a lot of the templates I had in mind have probably already been created. I'm just not familiar with them yet, seeing as though I haven't been around that long—{{Tilde}} being a prime example. I'll post back here if anything else comes to mind. —XhantarTalk 19:38, 6 February 2007 (UTC)
There do seem to be quite a lot of templates floating around that are rather hard to find; if you come across anything that seems especially useful, be sure to mention them! -- Natalya 22:00, 6 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] New Wikimedia policy - referring organizations complaining about factual problems to the Help Desk

On February 5th, User:Zanimum changed Wikipedia:Contact us/Article problem/Factual error (from enterprise) so that the first listed action under "Solutions" is to "ask the help desk", rather than "change the content yourself". Specific instructions are to post a new section at the help desk:

clearly explain what information is incorrect, and what the correct information should be. We ask that you provide sources where we can verify this information, preferably on an official website or independent resource, such as a newspaper or trade journal article.

User:Zanimum is an administrator and a member of the Wikimedia Foundation's Communications Committee.

So - it seems worth suggesting to those who answer questions here that it might not be a good idea, when presented with a question about a factual error, by someone from an enterprise (organization), to tell them "please fix it yourself". Instead, in the spirit of what the Foundation seems to want, I recommend that editors answering the question, at minimum, post the disputed information on the article talk page, to assist things, and at maximum actually research the problem and deal with it, including editing the article as needed.

Also, related: per Wikipedia talk:Requests for adminship#Help Desk personnel needed, it seems that editors are being recruited to help out here. -- John Broughton (☎☎) 16:47, 9 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Merge new Contributor's Help Page?

It would be useful to have some more people on the New Contributor's Help Page, actually. I just answered a question which had been there for over 12 hours, with an email address sitting on the page all that time. --ais523 09:05, 12 February 2007 (UTC)

I know I opposed a merger sometime ago, but with the low traffic at the New contributors' help page should it be closed down so all questions are asked at the Help desk instead?--Commander Keane 00:51, 16 February 2007 (UTC)
I would support a merge. I only found out that page existed after the message here, and from the low traffic it appears that others have similar difficulty finding it. It seems to attract the same sort of problems. Unless there's a problem I'm overlooking then why not? Trebor 00:54, 16 February 2007 (UTC)
This help desk already gets a number of very basic questions. I'd certainly support a redirect being put in place. -- John Broughton (♫♫) 02:48, 16 February 2007 (UTC)
Fifthed. Xiner (talk, email) 04:55, 16 February 2007 (UTC)
I'd also strongly support merging the two pages, as they both basically perform the same function. -- Chairman S. Talk Contribs 05:16, 16 February 2007 (UTC)
I'll add to the support snowball. Mishatx *разговор* 05:34, 16 February 2007 (UTC)
Good idea. Merge them. AndyJones 09:04, 16 February 2007 (UTC)
I support a merge. Many of the questions here are help questions from 'new contributers' anyway, we don't need two pages that basically serve the same function. --`/aksha 13:05, 16 February 2007 (UTC)
It's probably worth merging, to help streamline the process of answering questions and avoid process creep. Pretty much the same people are going to know the answers, even if the pages tend to attract different questions (the Help Desk attracts a superset of the sort of questions that NCH does). --ais523 13:10, 16 February 2007 (UTC)
Practically speaking, what needs to be done to merge it? Make the page a redirect to here, and take out the links to it (in places like this? The archives will probably need to go somewhere too. And is there anything in the header worth transferring here? Trebor 13:15, 16 February 2007 (UTC)
We need to move the archives to a (preferably new) subpage here, the NCH talk to a subpage of this talk page, merge the headers, redirect NCH here, and then change inbound links. There are quite a lot from Wikipedia-space, and some important ones from Template-space, so practically we're going to need a manually-assisted bot or something like that to sort it out (possibly someone with WP:AWB could manage it?). --ais523 13:29, 16 February 2007 (UTC)
Um, really, I like the NCHP much more than the help desk, because at least 50% of the retarded I wanna do this questions go away, and secondly it doesn't freakin' crash my computer because of the f'in huge page sizes! Honestly, I would only support a merge if Help Desk was archived off much more frequently. Dåvid Fuchs (talk / frog blast the vent core!) 13:32, 16 February 2007 (UTC)
Yes, the NCHP does tend to gather more of the very basic questions. The problem is that it's not easy to find, especially for new contributors who aren't familiar with Wikipedia. I find I like having the separate page, because I can answer most of the questions at NCHP, but not necessarily the (sometimes) more complex questions at WP:HD. My suggestion would be to make the NCHP much more prominent somehow (e.g. a Help link at the top of the page along with all the others), but if that proves logistically or practically too difficult, then go ahead and merge. I would echo David Fuchs, though, that the WP:HD is already to long to handle, and that if more traffic is redirected to it, something needs to be done to keep it short.
Judging from the questions that get repeated many times, most people don't bother to read the questions submitted by others, so there doesn't seem to be much point in keeping questions around after they've been answered. Alternatively, we could adopt a policy of answering all questions (or all non-IP questions) on the users' talk pages, which would keep WP:HD a little shorter.
Just throwing out some ideas here. Let me know what you think. —PurpleRAIN 17:23, 16 February 2007 (UTC)
Actually we only know that the people who ask the redundant questions are not reading the old questions; we have no data as to how many people read the old questions, get answers that way, and do not ask. Perhaps counting the page views on the Help desk and comparing that to the number of edits would be instructive (is the ratio of views to edits hundreds to one, or one to one?). It might be worthwhile to create a list of templates for classifying and tagging redundant questions, and display a running count somewhere prominent (what was the most frequently asked question for February? Etc.). It also might not hurt to display a form for searching the Help desk and its archive, like this (seriously, try typing some typical newbie questions in the Google search form, and see how the answers tend to come up on the first page of results). I wonder, how long will it be before we have some sort of natural language processing capability that can parse some of the repetitive questions and provide useful stock answers? Given the element of predictability in a lot of the questions, that would seem almost within the realm of possibility. How about using some of the same methods used to classify SPAM e-mails? Maybe someone could go through the Help desk archives, group all instances of "the same" questions together, and use some sort of pattern learning algorithm or whatever on it, to map from the question set to the answer set. Maybe the result would be good enough to save some labor. --Teratornis 05:23, 15 March 2007 (UTC)

I agree. Many people don't seem to read the questions here. The more complex questions should stay, though, b/c more experienced users actually find the answers interesting sometimes. Xiner (talk, email) 18:06, 16 February 2007 (UTC)

The New Contributor's Help Page is a very accessable place for new editors to ask questions. As has been mentioned, many of the question on the Help Desk are more technical in nature, which can make it seem like an intimidating place for a new editor who just wants to ask how to create new sections on a page. I think it is a helpful place where people know questions are welcome, even if they might seem simple, and should therefore not be merged. It is a good point that it is not as well known as the Help Desk, so perhaps more can be done to let people know about it. -- Natalya 21:57, 16 February 2007 (UTC)
The New Contributor's Help Page is a very accessable place for new editors to ask questions. - no more accessible than this page, with a redirect
many of the question on the Help Desk are more technical in nature, which can make it seem like an intimidating place for a new editor who just wants to ask how to create new sections on a page. - That's pure speculation. We already know that a lot of people don't read questions posed by others, so they are hardly going to be intimidated. If we really are worried about "intimidation", we can put up something that at the top of the page that says "All questions, no matter what level, are welcome, but please read the FAQ first." (Besides which, given how basic so many of the questions here are, already, why would someone be intimidated by the more technical ones. Only if virtually all of the questions on this help page were technical (not at all the case) would we need to worry about "intimidation".
If we need to put this to a more formal show of hands, let's do this, but it seems like a valuable simplification to me. Bot is assistance is available at Wikipedia:Bot requests for automated changes. And the changeover can be done incrementally; with a redirect in place, we don't need to fix every template or wikilink all at once. I'm not even sure we need to move the archives; we could just have a cross-reference here on this page. -- John Broughton (♫♫) 01:22, 18 February 2007 (UTC)
"Accessable" is meant not in ease of physical access, but as a place that new contributors know they are welcome. As for considering the Help Desk an indimidating place, of course it is speculation; unless we plan to take a poll of all the new users and ask what they think of the Help Desk, we will have no definite answers. More than one editor, however, has expressed this sentiment, as can be seen by the multiple discussions of merging with the Help Desk at Wikipedia talk:New contributors' help page. I don't think it's a big issue, but with the merge, we may get more new editors asking less questions and therefore only learning through mistakes. That's not necessarily bad, and of course it is still speculation, but speculation is involved whenever considering the future. -- Natalya 18:11, 18 February 2007 (UTC)
  • I don't oppose a merger as long as the archives are put in an accessible place and as long as efforts to draw newbies to the help desk are improved. - Mgm|(talk) 10:12, 23 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Repurpose the new contributor's help page?

I'm not responding directly to these points; I want to add a strong caveat: The New Contributor's Help Page should stay where it is; the issue is whether it should be a place to ask questions. I suggest that it not be, for reasons mentioned above, but rather that new users be referred to Wikipedia:Questions. (I don't particularly like the layout of that page, but that's another issue.) -- John Broughton (♫♫) 19:03, 19 February 2007 (UTC)

I disagree. We already have ample help pages for the newcomer. There's a Welcome page, an About page, an Introduction, a Tutorial, and a Getting started page. Another static help page for new users would simply be redundant. The Transhumanist   16:12, 27 February 2007 (UTC)
Static pages may be hard for many first-time visitors to comprehend. A user has to know a certain amount about computers and Wikipedia to find and navigate through the static training pages; passively watching a demonstration while listening to a narrator flattens that initial barrier. Wikipedia:Instructional material#MediaWiki training videos lists some interesting examples of what can be done with videos at low cost. New users might benefit from access to a large video library covering more of the Wikipedia knowledge. --Teratornis 04:43, 15 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Archiving suggestion

I don't know anything about bot design, but in a perfect world:

  1. A bot would archive all requests some period (7 days?) after they received their first response.
    • (Even better, maybe we could have some template system to mark questions as answered in hidden text, so that the bot could tell answered from unanswered questions).
  2. After archiving, the bot would put a message on the talk page of the original posting user notifying them that their question had been archived and including a link to the question and response in the archive. (For extra credit, the bot might confirm that the question heading was unique in the archive).
  3. The bot would archive unanswered questions after some period (21 days?) after posting, and post a link to the archive question and an apology to the poster.

Thoughts? Thanks, TheronJ 15:28, 16 February 2007 (UTC)

With regards to the first point, I would welcome much more frequent archiving (2ish days?) as the page grows to ridiculous sizes, yet the vast majority of sections are answered satisfactorily by one person. Actually, given the inability to watchlist a particular section, subsequent questions posted in pre-existing sections are unlikely to be seen at all. Trebor 15:32, 16 February 2007 (UTC)
It's meant to be archived by RefDeskBot, but that bot is down at the moment so we're having to do it by hand. --ais523 18:08, 16 February 2007 (UTC)

The absolutely simple questions be moved to the registered user's talk page when answered, as some have suggested. May not help a whole lot, though. Xiner (talk, email) 18:13, 16 February 2007 (UTC)

I did some manual archiving a few days ago and noticed the the archives are setup so that newly archived pages are transcluded onto the main HD page, which is what i did for Feb8-Feb11. But none of those sections have gotten a new edit since. I'm going to go and remove the transcluded pages. Until the bot gets back, exactly how many days do we want to have on the HD page before archiving? --`/aksha 02:23, 17 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Automated archiving

Mention was made in the prior section about the page getting too long on occasion. Does anyone have an objection to automating the archiving of the page - any section over 48 hours old gets archived by a bot? -- John Broughton (♫♫) 01:34, 18 February 2007 (UTC)

Good idea, saves time and effort. --K.Z Talk • Vandal • Contrib 01:44, 18 February 2007 (UTC)
Didn't the page use to be archive questions older than a week? I'd try at least four days now. Two days seems a bit too quick. Btw, the page needs archival now. Xiner (talk, email) 03:27, 20 February 2007 (UTC)
Done. I'll check on Werdnabot (sp?) for archiving, unless someone else gets there first. -- John Broughton (♫♫) 03:55, 21 February 2007 (UTC)
I'm added code from User talk:Yonatanh and Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Arbitration enforcement for automated processing of my own user talk page by User:Werdnabot as a test - I'm trying to replicate the archiving by individual date that now occurs (done manually). I'm guessing that the name of the archive (e.g., 2007-Feb-21) will the actual date that a bunch of sections were archived, rather than when they were created (that is, the date that the questions were asked), but I don't think that's a big issue (anyway, I hope it's not). Also, the heading for each day will have to be deleted by hand once the day's postings have been entirely archived; again, no big deal, I hope. -- John Broughton (♫♫) 23:44, 21 February 2007 (UTC)
Two days is much too quick in my opinion. Supporting Xiner's opinion.. SubSeven 08:33, 25 February 2007 (UTC)

The page needs to be archived again. Thanks. Xiner (talk, email) 03:55, 24 February 2007 (UTC)

Wait, wait. You may wish to talk to Martinp23 (talk • contribs • blocks • protects • deletions • moves) about RefDeskBot (talk • contribs), whose very purpose is being replaced! It shouldn't be that hard for Martinp23 to change the source code for archival time. GracenotesT § 15:28, 25 February 2007 (UTC)
Nice bot. I've left him a note but I'm kinda confused about what's what, so I'd appreciate if you could check it for factual errors. Thanks. Xiner (talk, email) 22:04, 26 February 2007 (UTC)
Yep - if you can wait a few days, I'll get RefDeskBot to archive the desk as it has done in the past (it's been down for about a month due to problems with my internet connection). I'd urge against going to getting WerdnaBot or similar, as that sort aren't as suitable for desk archival. A solution like RDB is specifically tailored to the RD and HD, and makes things like monthly archive pages giving the titles of each question. Over the last 6 months or so, RDB has been working on the HD and RDs, and my problems with my phone line caused the bot to be inactive for a month or so. Back when the bot was running, I think it was on a 3 or 4 day throttle, which should still be fine now. Thanks - Martinp23 21:33, 28 February 2007 (UTC)
Hmm, one note. Do we need the HD Q&As archived? I don't think anyone checks them. Xiner (talk, email) 21:40, 28 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Section editing not possible

The edit buttons are gone from the help desk. What's up with that? I don't get them in Firefox or IE. Xiner (talk, email) 22:04, 26 February 2007 (UTC)

They appear on my browser. My guess is that there must have been a __NOEDITSECTION__ somewhere on the page in a previous revision, which would indeed remove the section editing links (I use that magic word on my userpage). Try clearing your cache perhaps? Kyra~(talk) 22:31, 26 February 2007 (UTC)
Ignore that, I thought I was looking at the help desk for a second, hunting for the magic word now... my mistake. Kyra~(talk) 22:32, 26 February 2007 (UTC)
Well, I have narrowed it down. The magic word is not on the page, and testing the raw code in a wiki on my machine doesn't duplicate the behavior (using version 1.7). I suppose trying selective reverts might work, though. It's an idea at least. I am going to try upgrading to the current version and importing the templates used; no idea if it will work, however. Kyra~(talk) 22:57, 26 February 2007 (UTC)
There is a discussion at Wikipedia:Village pump (technical) about this as well. Mr.Z-mantalk¢ 23:05, 26 February 2007 (UTC)

Tra's fixed it. An errant post. Xiner (talk, email) 23:10, 26 February 2007 (UTC)

I may as well add that it can be easily fixed by editing the entire page, and scrolling below the edit box and seeing what pages are transcluded on WP:HD. Although it's great that it has been fixed! GracenotesT § 22:17, 1 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Message box

In the short time I've volunteered here, I've noticed there are many questions asked in which don't relate to Wikipedia in which should be asked at the reference desk, maybe we should add a mesage box like the one on Wikipedia:Changing Username with the big stop hand on it explaining that this is only for wikipedia related questions, any thoughts and/or comments.Tellyaddict 18:29, 6 March 2007 (UTC)

It won't help in the slightest. Clearly many people post without reading the instructions, indeed with almost no idea of where they are or what they are doing. They also never see the replies, so we might just as well ignore or delete them. Notinasnaid 18:34, 6 March 2007 (UTC)
I suppose you could be right, still people can voice their thoughts here! Thanks for your quick comments Tellyaddict 18:41, 6 March 2007 (UTC)
Well, there is already a rather large template at the top of the page {{Wikipedia:Help desk/Header}}--VectorPotentialTalk 18:47, 6 March 2007 (UTC)
Yes, and it's not working that well. I'm going to change it; let's see if that makes any difference. -- John Broughton (♫♫) 18:28, 11 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] hi

hi i dont know what to do, can anyone help—The preceding unsigned comment was added by Akemi2.0 (talk • contribs).

That depends. What sort of thing do you want to do? (To reply to this message click the Edit link next to "hi", and type your response at the end, then click Save Page. Notinasnaid 19:04, 7 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] CITE PART OF AN ARTICLE

How can part of an article, say one paragraph, be saved as a file?

69.255.232.144 21:27, 9 March 2007 (UTC)

The only way I can think of is to copy and paste. If it is not formatted when you do that, try the printable version. Prodego talk 21:30, 9 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Naive Bayes classifier for automatically answering repetitive Help desk questions?

Has anyone thought about training a Naive Bayes classifier to answer Help desk questions? A percentage of questions are repetitive, and amenable to canned document answers (such as pages on WP:CUTS). A program like POPFile can be trained to classify e-mail as SPAM, or filter messages into arbitrary categories, based on nothing more than how a user chose to classify the previous messages. It seems that someone could similarly train a naive Bayes classifier by feeding it all the archived Help desk questions and the canned documents cited in their answers. Maybe the classifier could learn to return the canned documents likely to feature in human-edited responses to new questions. If nothing else, this might save the human responders' time, as they would start off with a list of plausible canned documents to mention in their answers. Maybe the canned documents would be good enough by themselves for some users. Also, I added a Google search link to the Help desk archives to Wikipedia:Help desk/Header. I tried pasting a few of the recent questions directly into the search form, and occasionally that yielded useful hits on previous answers to similar questions. Maybe some users will try that before asking (we will never hear from those who find answers that way). --Teratornis 06:45, 15 March 2007 (UTC)

It's an interesting idea, but I feel implementing it will likely be more trouble than it's worth. It seems that people are happy with answering the even repetitive questions, and people generally get an answer quickly on this board. Furthermore, there is a big link to the WP:VFAQ in the header, so if I see a question that is answered by that I will just point people there. But if you'd like to try training a classifier, don't let this stop you. There's plenty of data in the history of this page. It might actually be fun :-) -SpuriousQ (talk) 02:36, 16 March 2007 (UTC)
Indeed, it might be fun. Wikipedia is possibly a special case. I haven't seen another wiki with such a large and helpful user community. If every product came with this level of support, the world of technology would be very different. People who download MediaWiki and run corporate wikis on it have the same powerful software, minus the caring and knowledgeable user community! To people who have never used a markup language, that's pretty scary. The WikiMedia Foundation gives away great software; I wonder if it would be possible to start exporting actual knowledge along with the product. The Help desk archives represent a valuable, apparently unexploited resource of skilled answers to typical questions that new users are likely to have on other wikis.
Also, even though the Help desk on Wikipedia works great, when users find it, Wikipedia has millions of accounts with few or zero edits. There seem to be millions of people who never make it to the Help desk. I wonder if having a more interactive question-answering automated assistant would lower the apparently high barrier many new users face? Plus I'm interested in providing technical support for other products besides wikis (it's that j-o-b thing). Wikipedia looks like a good place to test ideas for information mining, given the well-stocked Help desk archive and the GFDL which says we can try anything we want with the data. I think I'll browse over to Wikipedia in academic studies and see if any of the rocket scientists there want to take a shot at the technical support problem. Or maybe I'll try it myself. --Teratornis 04:13, 16 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Messed up

Trying to keep on the same time zone as when the other dates are done, i have tried to edit the page with no luck. The dating system is messed up with multiple comments done on the 21st listed under the 20th and only 2 comments under the actual date. The page will not let editing occur before those 2 comments on the 21st. Simply south 17:05, 22 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] mega newbie question

Ahem. Err, hi there. What does the little red ka-thwang thingy -->  ! <-- mean on the recent changes page? Bmackenty 18:23, 22 March 2007 (UTC)

It means that nobody has checked the change to make sure that it isn't vandalism yet. (By the way, these 'patrol marks' aren't used on the English Wikipedia, but they are on some of the smaller ones.) --ais523 18:25, 22 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Instructions

I've often looked with some disappointment at the instructions at the top of the help page, so widely ignored, which now run to two-and-half screens in my browser. So I was pleased today to unearth while on a routine dig the following note: Wikipedia:Avoid instruction creep. Comments? Notinasnaid 09:10, 28 March 2007 (UTC)

I found a duplicate statement and just made a small change to Wikipedia:Help desk/Header to correct it. Otherwise, it does make sense to condense the header somewhat - I suggest getting rid of most of it since it is ignored - the most critical stuff will remain and potentially be viewed more often that way. Nihiltres 16:22, 28 March 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Archiving

I know this has been discussed before, but maybe this page is getting more attention than before. It takes much longer that any other page on WP to load on my broadband cable connection. On dialup, forget it. Sections should really be archived a day or 2 sooner. Mr.Z-mantalk¢ 02:42, 6 April 2007 (UTC)

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