Community Portal

Welcome to the Community Portal. This is the place to find out what's happening on Wikipedia. Learn what tasks need to be done, what groups there are to join, and get or post news about recent events or current activities taking place on Wikipedia.

Community bulletin board

Post your Wikipedia-related news and announcements here!

Volume 4, Issue 9 — 2008-02-25 Signpost interview: Michael Snow Controversial RfA results in resysopping of ^demon Sockpuppeting administrator desysopped, community banned Two major print encyclopedias cease production WikiWorld: "Hyperthymesia" News and notes: Wikimania Call for Participation, milestones Wikipedia in the News WikiProject Report: Family Guy Dispatches: A snapshot of featured article categories Features and admins Bugs, Repairs, and Internal Operational News The Report on Lengthy Litigation Archives·Newsroom·Tip line·Single-page·Subscribe Episode 41: Setting the Record Straight 5 February 2008 Witty Lama interviews Angela Beesley. Topics include: What’s it like to have an article about yourself; Wikimania ‘08 is getting started and ‘09 in the bidding stage; the Foundation’s advisory board, who they are and what they do; and clearing up some misconceptions about Wikia including nofollow, Kaltura and Search. Onsite · Offsite Subscription · Feedback

Notices

• A proposed, open system to review articles for factual accuracy has been suggested at Wikipedia:Factual review. Your commentary is encouraged.
• We developed a family of three templates for linking to external media not contained in commons: {{externalimage}}, {{externalvideo}} and {{externalaudio}}
• Need a diagram to help illustrate an article? Request it at Philip Greenspun illustration project/Requests.
• Like copyediting and evaluating articles? Good articles nominations needs your help to clear the backlog!

New project pages seeking contributors

Discussions

Discussions in the following areas have requested wider attention:

See also

Wikizine · In the media · News · Announcements · Mailing lists

Help out

Wikipedia is, by number of articles, the largest encyclopedia ever to exist. However, many articles are stubs, or otherwise need attention. If you like, go ahead, be bold, and jump right in. If you aren't ready to fly solo, you can participate in a Collaboration.

Things to do

• Respond to a request for comment, Wikiquette alert or provide a third opinion.
• Adopt a basic topic list, to help develop and maintain a table of contents to a major subject on Wikipedia.
• Give a requested editor review.
• Can you draw or take pictures? Make a requested image.
• Peer review or give feedback on some articles.
• Make recommendations on articles listed at Good article review.
• Respond to the Reward board or Bounty board.
• Are you good at photo editing? Then try cleaning up some of these images, or helping out at the Graphics Lab.
• Can you use GIS tools? Help make requested maps.
• Can you communicate in another language? There are articles that need translation into English. You can also proofread a translation.
• Let SuggestBot suggest pages for you to improve.
• Update pages with old (ref or note template) citations to the new references format.
• Patrol new pages and help improving new articles.
• Visit the Award Center and take the challenge of improving an article.

Fix-up projects

Here are some tasks you can do:

• Wikify: Don Angell, Sergio Berlioz, Gene Clark, Maravilla, Alhamiri, Backlog...
• Cleanup: List of music prodigies, Harry T. Burn, 1990 in association football, Software quality, Purwokerto, Backlog...
• Stubs: 1928 in radio, Capitalist Roader, Cable box (outside), CEVNI, Ajeeb, Academic institution, 112, More...
• Verify: Language demographics of Quebec, Jean-Baptiste Vuillaume, Pirates in popular culture, Pat Sharp, Angel, Backlog...
• Update: British Columbia Highway 99A, Australian Senate, Ansari X Prize, BBC One, Bright House Networks, More...
• Neutrality: E. Lee Spence, History of Latinos and Hispanics in the United States, Cod, Jack Dann, Liang-Jie Zhang, Backlog...
• Copyedit: Oru Vadakkan Veeragatha, OC Transpo Route 95, Naidu, Sorcerer Hunters, Gienger, More...
• Merge: Mendez Middle School, Elgin tablets, Alma High School (Arkansas), Institute of Scientific Instrumentation, Backlog...
• Style: Evolution of belief, CD-R, Gladiators (British TV show), Mercer County Park, Henry V (play), More...
• Expand: Bone Against Steel, Jed Buchwald, 1593 in music, Dan Balz, 1962 NFL Draft, The Artist at Work, 1975 Minnesota Twins season, 4G, More...
• Requests: List of gelechiid genera: Q, Michele Gurdal, Cliff Lloyd, Gakken, More...
• Mediation Cabal: Sassanid Empire, Dirty, Dangerous and Demeaning, Singapore Airlines, List of countries by GDP per capita, Sterling Jewelers, or help mediate an open case!
• Cleanup backlogs - Review recent overhauls - Active fixup projects - Maintenance projects - Maintenance COTW: be merged

Not sure where to report a certain type of problem with article content? If it exists, it's probably listed at Wikipedia:Maintenance.

Collaborations

To improve the quality of articles that are short or lacking in detail, Wikipedia's community organizes collaborations to expand articles.

Core Topics Collaboration

The Core Topics Collaboration of the Fortnight works to improve essential Wikipedia topics. The current collaboration is Tool.

A tool or device is a piece of equipment which typically provides a mechanical advantage in accomplishing a physical task, or provides an ability that is not naturally available to the user of a tool. The most basic tools are simple machines. For example, a crowbar simply functions as a lever. The further out from the pivot point, the more force is transmitted along the lever. When particularly intended for domestic use, a tool is often called a utensil.

Philosophers once thought that only humans used tools, and often defined humans as tool-using animals.^{[citation needed]} But observation has confirmed that multiple species can use tools, including monkeys, apes, several corvids, sea otters, and others.

Other collaborations

Active improvement teams

Maintenance

Help clear up the backlog of articles to be merged! Merging is the process combining two (or sometimes more) articles into a new article, or adding the content of one article to another. You'll need to be familiar with the associated templates. Before you begin, you need to know the details of merging and moving pages. After you read that, you're ready to begin consolidating and improving articles!

WikiProjects

WikiProjects are ongoing team efforts to improve articles having to do with a particular subject, and to manage the logistics of that topic. Hundreds exist — examine the master list to find one that interests you. They are separate from, though may work with, Collaborations.

Language translation

Wikipedia is not just in English! Versions exist in many different languages. To fill in some of the English Wikipedia's gaps, we translate articles from other languages into English. You can view a list of articles that need translation from any language, or, in a few cases, by only one language (this is only available for the more popular languages).

Collaborations by topic

Guidelines, help, and resources

Wikipedia has many help pages, policies, and departments. Here are some of the most general. For a comprehensive list of Wikipedia's departments, see the Wikipedia department directory.

Help

• Wikipedia help - Browse help pages
• Where to ask questions

Editing

• The Manual of Style guidelines and tutorial
• How to edit a page
• Contributing
• How to write a great article
• Where to find information for articles
• A list of template messages
• What special pages are
• Tools for editing
• Request newspapers or magazines

Policies and guidelines

Wikipedia has many established policies, guidelines, conventions, and traditions. This is a very brief sampling of some of the most important; for more information, see the main policies and guidelines page. Policies and guidelines apply both to articles and how to work with fellow editors. For easy access, the shortcuts to the pages are also listed.

Article standards

Working with others

Resources

New user information

Introduction · Sandbox · Help · Adoption · What Wikipedia is not · Glossary · Account benefits · Planning school assignments

Ways to communicate

Contact (overview) · Discussion pages · Mailing lists · IRC chat · Meetups · User pages · Requests for comment · Public watchlists · Regional notice boards · Administrators' noticeboard · Requests for article feedback · Local Embassy

Community support groups and programs

Welcoming committee · Editor assistance · Wiki-adoption · Birthday Committee · Harmonious editing club · Kindness Campaign · Reach out · Stress alerts · Wikipedia awards program · Dept. of Fun · One featured article per quarter · Missing encyclopedic articles

Common procedures

Featured content · Good articles · Requests for feedback · Deleting a page (full policy) · Moving a page (naming policies) · Protecting a page (full policy) · Reverting a page · Administrator nominations (summaries) · Category-based access

How to resolve conflicts

Stay cool! · Be nice to newcomers · Alert others · Dispute resolution · Arbitration policy

Community information

About Wikipedia · Goings-on · About Wikimedia · Wikipedians · Wiki-adoption · Donations · Administrators · Babel · Culture · Games · Humor · Mottoes

Related communities

Tip of the day...

Sometimes it is necessary to refer to a specific section of a page when linking, rather than the whole page.

You can create a link to any subheading on any page in Wikipedia by including a # character followed by the subheading at the end of a link. For example:

Wikipedia:Community Portal#Things to do.

In all section links, be sure to use a piped link for readability, like this:

:[[Wikipedia:Community Portal#Things to do|Things to do]]

which looks like this:

Things to do

If a section title changes, rather than go red/inactive, the link will lead to the top of the linked page. Keep in mind that redirects do not follow section links, making it useless to include them there.

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