Wikipedia:Village pump (miscellaneous)

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[edit] Unique Visitors Per Month / Unique Editors per Month?

I'm trying to figure out who Contribution percentage for Wikipedia. I'm wondering how many unique visitors Wikipedia gets each month? And of those how many are actually edit something? Is there a good place where I can start looking for this information? Kayur (talk)

It doesn't sound like this is quite what you are looking for but Wikipedia article traffic statistics might be a decent place to start from. It at least shows that this kind of thing is technically possible and the raw data is linked to from that page. - AdamBMorgan (talk) 16:53, 9 June 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Official Election Notice

The 2008 Board election committee announces the 2008 election process. Wikimedians will have the opportunity to elect one candidate from the Wikimedia community to serve as a representative on the Board of Trustees. The successful candidate will serve a one-year term, ending in July 2009.

Candidates may nominate themselves for election between May 8 and May 22, and the voting will occur between 1 June and 21 June. For more information on the voting and candidate requirements, see <http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Board_elections/2008>.

The voting system to be used in this election has not yet been confirmed, however voting will be by secret ballot, and confidentiality will be strictly maintained.

Votes will again be cast and counted on a server owned by an independent, neutral third party, Software in the Public Interest (SPI). SPI will hold cryptographic keys and be responsible for tallying the votes and providing final vote counts to the Election Committee. SPI provided excellent help during the 2007 elections.

Further information can be found at <http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Board_elections/2008/en>. Questions may be directed to the Election Committee at <http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Talk:Board_elections/2008/en>. If you are interested in translating official election pages into your own language, please see <http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Board_elections/2008/Translation>.

For the election committee,
Philippe Beaudette

[edit] RBAG Spam

Chris is currently being considered for BAG membership. To view the discussion and voice your opinion, please visit click here.

[edit] So and so is a fictional character

Why do so many articles on televsion characters begin with the line, "so and so is a fictional character in so and so series"? Why fictional? Shouldn't that be obvious from context? An encyclopedia would never refer to a real person as a "character". Indeed, "so and so is a fictional character" is actively misleading in many cases. It makes it sound like a character is fictional within that show's universe, like Itchy and Scratchy in The Simpsons.

I see similar patterns in articles on comic book characters. Look at the first line at Captain Marvel (DC Comics): "Captain Marvel is a fictional comic book superhero..." As opposed to a real comic book superhero?

I've started a discussion about this here. It would be great if people could stop by. Awbizkomeydownstar (talk) 08:13, 28 May 2008 (UTC)

This was discussed and agreed on some time ago. It may be obvious to you that David Copperfield is a fictional character (or that he is not a fictional character) but that does not mean that it is obvious to someone who has never heard of him. Particularly when it comes to minor characters from minor novels, experience proved that it was necessary to establish context for fictional characters to prevent confusion. Hence the standard wording that WP now uses for them. -- Derek Ross | Talk 19:56, 28 May 2008 (UTC)
Is there a link to a past discussion? Awbizkomeydownstar (talk) 23:26, 28 May 2008 (UTC)
You want a link to a discussion that took place five or six years ago ? That could be tricky. -- Derek Ross | Talk 03:11, 29 May 2008 (UTC)
Take a look at Wikipedia:Manual of Style (writing about fiction). I'm sure plenty of discussion has happened on the talk page and its archives. --—— Gadget850 (Ed) talk - 18:35, 3 June 2008 (UTC)
The lead for Doctor Doom is probably better written: "Doctor Doom is a fictional character that appears in the comic books published by Marvel Comics." --—— Gadget850 (Ed) talk - 20:59, 3 June 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Double Spaced?

Maybe Wikipedia as a whole should be either 1.5 our double spaced to make reading easier. There should also be a button to increase or decrease the size of the font on each page. What do you guys think? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.178.240.81 (talk) 01:58, 29 May 2008 (UTC)

Most browsers can change the text size for you. Ctrl+ and Ctrl- work in FireFox and IE. Algebraist 11:18, 29 May 2008 (UTC)
Consider registering an account - then you can edit your monobook.css (mine is at User:Alex.muller/monobook.css) to add:
p { line-height: 200%; }
or something similar. Alex Muller 09:53, 6 June 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Divorce

Its true the men after a Divorce in USA need to suport fincellt the women?Wolfmann (talk) 19:53, 1 June 2008 (UTC)

No. This question should be on the reference desk, but in general a court will establish whether or not one person will pay alimony or child support to the other after divorce. It is not uncommon for the woman to end up being the one paying one or both of these. Dcoetzee 20:44, 1 June 2008 (UTC)
Just as an aside to passing readers, here is the reference desk referred to above. --tiny plastic Grey Knight ⊖ 09:11, 6 June 2008 (UTC)

[edit] New MOS for TV

The television community currently has an MOS guideline under proposal, and would appreciate all comments at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Television/Style guidelines#MOS proposal in order to have the best possible guide for television related articles.  BIGNOLE  (Contact me) 12:04, 3 June 2008 (UTC)

[edit] How much info on embarassing associates should be in a presidential candidate's biography?

Some editors here think that when a U.S. presidential candidate is embarassed by someone associated with that candidate, no information about it should be mentioned in the WP biography article, even if the campaign (and therefore the person who is the subject of the article) was affected. Others think WP should only mention that this person was controversial and leave a link in the article to the WP article on that controversial associate. Still others (including me), think we should briefly explain just why that person was controversial in the candidate's life, which can be done in a phrase or at most a sentence or two. Examples:

Whatever we do, we should have equal treatment, so anyone interested in NPOV-, WP:BLP-compliant articles should look at and participate in the discussion at Talk:Barack Obama#Attempt to build consensus on the details. We've started the discussion on how much to say about former Weather Underground leader Bill Ayers in the Barack Obama article, but this will likely affect many other articles. Noroton (talk) 15:26, 3 June 2008 (UTC)

Please don't respond here! Please respond at the Talk:Barack Obama#Attempt to build consensus on the details where your comments will actually affect the consensus!!! Noroton (talk) 17:53, 3 June 2008 (UTC)
I agree that edits should be evenhanded and come from a NPOV, but to me the most important issues should be notability (within the context of that article) and verifiablity of the information in question. No doubt the people listed above should be included in the respective articles, but they shouldn't take up a majority of the article (and some of them are more notable than others within the context of each person - i.e. Wright > Rezko within the Obama artice). My $0.02. - Masonpatriot (talk) 15:56, 3 June 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Six Degrees of Wikipedia?

Do you reckon it's possible to get from any Wikipedia article to any other Wikipedia article just by clicking the hyperlinks in the text in less than six moves? Savager (talk) 18:28, 3 June 2008 (UTC)

It is not. You can't get to a page with no incoming links, for example, such as Al 'Uyaynah up till a minute ago. But see Wikipedia:Six degrees of Wikipedia. Algebraist 18:52, 3 June 2008 (UTC)
I tried a dozen or more combinations of two articles in Wikipedia:Six degrees of Wikipedia, getting as obscure as I could, and every single one took exactly four "jumps" between articles - no more, no less. Is this reflective of some deep truth about reality?!?! - DavidWBrooks (talk) 18:59, 3 June 2008 (UTC)
Yes. You have taken the first step towards complete omniscience. Celarnor Talk to me 19:53, 3 June 2008 (UTC)
here is the answer GameKeeper (talk) 07:39, 4 June 2008 (UTC)
From that website: "If you follow the best route in all cases, it takes an average of 4.573 clicks to get from any Wikipedia article to any other." (most likely referring to articles in the "big component") Dcoetzee 22:22, 5 June 2008 (UTC)
Except our Kevin Bacon is Billie Jean King. Phlegm Rooster (talk) 22:36, 5 June 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Alexa traffic rankings for Wikipedia

Any reason for Wikipedia jumping in traffic in the last 2 weeks: [1]? Samw (talk) 22:05, 3 June 2008 (UTC)

According to a Signpost article from May 2nd, it's a result of Alexa expanding their dataset in mid-April. - BanyanTree 07:06, 4 June 2008 (UTC)
Thanks! So the growth is only showing up now? The Alexa stats are even better than the Signpost article! Samw (talk) 03:07, 6 June 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Date parameter for split templates

It has been suggested that I get a consensus on my proposal to add a date parameter to the split templates. I feel that the change is minor and therefore consensus does not need to be sought. There is a discussion at Wikipedia:Requested templates#Date parameter for split templates. -- Alan Liefting (talk) - 22:40, 3 June 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Cleanup listings for WikiProjects

About 16% of all Wikipedia articles are flagged for cleanup of some sort, although this number varies largely by subject area. Any help in cleaning these massive backlogs is appreciated.

In order to help editors in finding articles of interest that need cleanup, I started to offer per-WikiProject and per-workgroup listings of flagged articles across all maintenance categories. See User:B. Wolterding/Cleanup listings for more information. The system has stabilized somewhat, and user feedback was quite positive, so I would invite more WikiProjects to join (i.e. to request listings).

By the way, the Urgent Maintenance Award of the Month is shared by the articles Legality of cannabis and Meme, each of which had 16 (sixteen) cleanup categories assigned as of May 24. --B. Wolterding (talk) 12:11, 4 June 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Problems with wiktionary transwiki

CopyToWiktionaryBot has not been functioning for some time. The category includes articles tagged for transfer from at least as far back as May 10, here. (There may be older; I only looked at a couple.) I wrote to the bot's operator, User:Connel MacKenzie, about it on May 24th and got a prompt reply, but it wasn't really encouraging that the bot would be up and running again any time soon as there is evidently an issue with "false positives" in Special:Import. (Note: I am technologically pretty clueless. I am reporting it, but I don't know what he meant by it. :)) He suggested that an admin may be found on Wiktionary in the event of an emergency transfer; I don't know that there are any emergencies in this list, but am concerned that they are stacking up; currently there are 52 pages in the category. I asked two days ago at AN to see if there were any administrators here who might also be admins there, who could help clear this up, but got no takers. Anybody here have any idea how we can handle this "in house"? If not, I may wander over to find some AN noticeboard on Wiktionary and ask for ideas there. --Moonriddengirl (talk) 16:48, 4 June 2008 (UTC)

[edit] How do I delete a disambiguation page?

I want to delete this page -> Wacol and link it straight to the Wacol, Queensland page 203.206.10.229 (talk) 15:39, 5 June 2008 (UTC)

If you're sure that that meets the requirements for disambiguation pages (here) i.e., that this particular Wacol is going to be the one wanted by most readers, then you should move (using the "move" tab) the content of Wacol to Wacol (disambiguation), and then edit the redirect that should be made on Wacol to point to Wacol, Queensland. You should finally add {{otherusesof|Wacol}} to the top of the Wacol, Queensland page so that the disambiguation page doesn't get lost. --tiny plastic Grey Knight ⊖ 16:19, 5 June 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Apple mention of Wikipedia

Dunno where stuff like this gets posted, but Apple just posted something about connecting directly to Wikipedia via its various programs.[2] EVula // talk // ☯ // 18:13, 5 June 2008 (UTC)

The signpost might be interested. Hut 8.5 08:04, 6 June 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Firefox 3

I think the article on the browser needs attention over this soon to be released version. -- Cat chi? 11:42, 6 June 2008 (UTC)

[edit] WMF election e-mail ... spam?

I got an e-mail from the "board-elections-2008" list through the Wikipedia e-mail feature letting me know I'm eligible to vote in the elections on this account. I assume many other users did as well.

I'm going to take the perhaps controversial stance that this type of e-mailing should be discouraged. I have a confirmed e-mail and the e-mail feature turned on to facilitate communication with other users. This sort of administrative e-mailing, I feel, is a slippery slope -- I don't really want my inbox to start collecting messages from the WMF, because those messages aren't really to me, and thus are, in my opinion, more or less spam.

Maybe I'm making a mountain out of a molehill here, since it is only one e-mail, but I'm generally of the opinion that, if it can happen once, it can happen a thousand times. Can I get some indication from others as to whether they feel that this sort of administrative use of the e-mail feature is appropriate?

Cheers - Revolving Bugbear 16:16, 6 June 2008 (UTC)

Well, board elections don't happen every day, at least. I can see your point of view, though, that you don't want things to get any bigger; it seems like at the least there should be an option to not receive such mailings (the default setting of this option I shall not opine on!) Luckily I doubt anyone will suggest mailing out every change to watchlisted articles or anything really insane (although a digest of that might be a nice optional feature... hm) --tiny plastic Grey Knight ⊖ 16:24, 6 June 2008 (UTC)
[3] JohnnyMrNinja 17:28, 6 June 2008 (UTC)
I've only ever gotten stuff for this board election. That's one a year. Don't worry about filling your mailbox's storage capacity. -Violask81976 20:56, 6 June 2008 (UTC)
It's a one-time-a-year thing; I don't have a problem with that. You're more likely to get more email abuse from vandals than from the Foundation. EVula // talk // ☯ // 21:48, 6 June 2008 (UTC)
It's probably reasonable to allow users to opt out of such messages, but generally I don't think this has been a large problem. – Luna Santin (talk) 00:05, 7 June 2008 (UTC)
One email from an organisation you have a prior relationship with is not spam. If it becomes lots of emails, then you can reasonably complain, but I think that is very unlikely. --Tango (talk) 00:23, 7 June 2008 (UTC)
It says right in the email that you can add yourself to the "no-mail list." Fleetflame 01:26, 8 June 2008 (UTC)
Which is at m:Wikimedia nomail list (the same as User:JohnnyMrNinja's unlabelled link above). --tiny plastic Grey Knight ⊖ 12:05, 9 June 2008 (UTC)
The "email feature" was not used. Rather, the elections committee was provided with a list of email addresses for eligable voters. We then removed all duplicates (to prevent users getting 2+ emails), and sent out the emails in a way which did not reveal the email addresses of other users. The lists will not be used for anything else, so as Violask81976 points out, one email a year (which wasn't even sent if you had already voted) letting you know you were eligable to vote in a project you were active on (you have to had made 50 edits in the last six months, so it's presumed you have some recent interest) does not seem in the slightest, unreasonable. There is no way this could be considered to be inappropriate spamming, or else the developers wouldn't have given us a list of emails in the first place. Daniel (talk) 13:43, 9 June 2008 (UTC)
All sounds reasonable. In this day and age we are just all getting a little bit paranoid about spam! :-) (me too!) ---tiny plastic Grey Knight ⊖ 14:18, 9 June 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Signpost

Where can I sign up to help on the Signpost? Thanks. SwirlBoy39 14:28, 8 June 2008 (UTC)

Drop a note to Ral315, the current editor-in-chief, and I'm sure he'll be able to point you in the right direction. Cheers! Tony Fox (arf!) 16:03, 9 June 2008 (UTC)
On the other hand the dynamics of organizing a rival publication could prove fascinating (if your application is rejected of course... best of luck). — CharlotteWebb 16:44, 9 June 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Input wanted for generic collapsible table template

Your comments wanted on this proposed template:


Go here for some usage examples. davidwr/(talk)/(contribs)/(e-mail) 01:41, 10 June 2008 (UTC)

You might want to look at {{hidden}}. --—— Gadget850 (Ed) talk - 02:08, 10 June 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Oh no, it's another puzzle-globe thread

Hello all; I've been trying to find Unicode codepoints for all the characters on the Wikipedia puzzle-globe; I think I've managed most of them, but there are still one or two mysterious ones, namely the two to the left of the Hebrew resh (which is U+05E8). You can check my table of research on m:Talk:Errors in the Wikipedia logo for reference. Any thoughts? --tiny plastic Grey Knight ⊖ 12:29, 10 June 2008 (UTC)

I guess it'd be better to have this on Wikipedia:Reference desk/Language#Mystery character, please view this Village Pump post as just an announcement. :-) --tiny plastic Grey Knight ⊖ 12:46, 10 June 2008 (UTC)