Community bulletin board

2010-10-25 News and notes: Mike Godwin leaves the Foundation, ArbCom election announced In the news: Good faith vs. bad faith, climate change, court citations, weirdest medieval fact, brief news WikiProject report: Nightmare on Wiki Street: WikiProject Horror Features and admins: The best of the week ArbCom interview: So what is being an arbitrator actually like? Arbitration report: Case closes within 1 month Technology report: Bugs, Repairs, and Internal Operational News About·Archives·Single-page·Newsroom·Suggestions Centralized discussion RfC: should the secret ballot method via SecurePoll continue to be used for the upcoming 2010 Arbitration Committee election in December? Straw poll: should lifespans be expressed in years alone at the top of a bio article, where the days/months appear in the body of the article and are not significant per se. RfC: Follow-up to various Sept+Oct RFCs on handling of 'meatpuppetry' in policy. Includes proposal to cover external canvassing with internal canvassing on one page and promote latter to policy. RfC: Proposal to change the icons used for user talk deletion notices. Talk page proposal to refine the WP:V policy section describing best practices in using scholarly and media sources. RfC: How long can an abandoned userspace draft stay before being deleted as a fake article? RfC: Are association football players an exemption to the general notability guideline? Discussion: Should WP:NFCC expressly require that all verbatim uses of non-free text be specifically denoted as quotations? Request for input on the reader ratings extension ("Article Feedback Tool") being tested on some articles. RfC: Should the word "football" be preceded with the disambiguation "code" (association, American, etc.) for all types of football on the first use of the word? RfC: Should users be prohibited from removing a block notice while the block is in effect?

Notices

• The Public Policy Initiative is recruiting Wikipedians for an assessment testing team, to help test out our trial assessment system (a more detailed rating system compatible with the standard Wikipedia 1.0 system). Team members will test the consistency of the metric and look for discrepancies between Wikipedian assessment and subject matter expert assessment. This work will play a crucial role in the evaluation of the public policy project and could lead to valuable insight as the foundation and community begin to work toward improving assessment within Wikipedia. Please check out the project assessment page or contact ARoth (Public Policy Initiative) for more info.

Project pages seeking contributors

Discussions

Discussions in the following areas have requested wider attention:

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 are not ready to fly solo, you can participate in a Collaboration.

Things to do

General tasks

• Patrol new pages and help improve new articles.
• Category:Wikipedia backlog always needs attention.
• Assess articles by quality or by importance—pick a topic of interest and grade according to that WikiProject's scale. (See links from article talk pages.)
• Adopt a basic topic list (Outline), to help develop and maintain a table of contents to a major subject on Wikipedia.
• Let SuggestBot suggest pages for you to improve.
• Update pages with old (ref or note template) citations to the new references format.
• Do you have a historical perspective? Articles slanted towards recent events might need to be looked at with a new eye.

Commenting

• Respond to a request for comment, Wikiquette alert or provide a third opinion.
• Give a requested editor review.
• Peer review or give feedback on some articles.
• Comment at Featured portal candidates and Portals at peer review.
• Make recommendations on articles listed at Good article reassessment.
• Respond to the Reward board or Bounty board.

Special skills

• Can you draw or take pictures? Make a requested image.
• 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.

Fix-up projects

Open tasks

Here are some tasks you can do:

• Wikify: Still Not Sorry, La Fille de l'eau, M.S. Schepkin Higher Theatre School (Institute), Carlos Zerpa, List of Jewish Biblical figures, More...
• Copyedit: Oskoruša, Commercial broadcasting, Y., Waitrose, Anant Laxman Kanhere, More...
• Update: Frank J. Anderson, List of North Queensland Cowboys players, BiCoastal, List of football clubs in France, Blitz Games, More...
• Style: Aita (mythology), Edina Realty Home Services, Brian's Hunt, Pyrrolysine, Media relations, More...
• Translation: Greek National Road 74, Vartholomio Railway Station, Aporá, Nea Vyssa, Francesco Mucci, More...
• Cleanup: Degree completion program, IStory, Nickelodeon Party Blast, List of ethnic groups in Chad, Optimist International, More...
• Verify: Milan Jovanović (footballer born 1981), Clinical trial, Workers' self-management, Chase (2010 TV series), Paul Bernardo, More...
• Neutrality: National Association of Theatre Owners, Thanmathra, Chronological summary of the 2006 Winter Olympics, House of Kawānanakoa, Criticism of the World Trade Organization, More...
• Original research: Community Displacement in Philadelphia, Desire (emotion), Artistic inspiration, Gentrification, A Gun for Sale, More...
• Merge: Madurantakam, Maduranthakam, FLUID, Nayna Mehta, CCTV International Russian, More...
• Split: W.I.T.C.H., Ergoline, Psionics (Dungeons & Dragons), Atari BASIC, Ethnicity of performers in pornography, More...
• Stubs: Brent R. Appel, Albéric de Montgolfier, Zane family, Maschen, Snowboarding at the 2003 Asian Winter Games, More...
• Expand: Chief Justice of India, Al Yarmouk University College, Abu Dhabi Securities Exchange, WPLP, Santa Fe College, More...
• Article Incubator: Podaa Podi, Melody EP, The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn, Cath Bowtell, Keith Akers, More...
• Article deletion discussions: Deletion, Philippines, Joyce Ching, Football, Max Amini, More...
• Article Requests: Mayo scissors, Flora of Argentina, Parliament of Chechnya, Chambeshi Bridge, Joseph Bosisto, More...
• Image Requests: Long-legged Warbler, Lasso d'amore, Shoulder angel, India Tower, Set-n-Forget cooker, More...
• Mediation Cabal: Chiropractic, Genetic algorithms, Charlie Anders, Eulsa Treaty, History of ancient Israel and Judah, Senkaku Islands, List of Mad Men episodes, Government in exile, or Help mediate an open case!

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

Purge

Collaborations

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

Collaborations by topic

Other collaborations

Active improvement teams

• Countering systemic bias
• Version 1.0
• Spam fighting team
• Categorization projects
• Spotlight

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.

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).

Guidelines, help & 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 contents – Browse help pages
• Help desk
• Where to ask questions

Editing

• The Manual of Style guidelines and tutorial
• How to edit a page
• Contributing
• How to write a great article
• A list of free online resources for research
• 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 to both 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 · New contributors' help page · FAQ

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 · Wikipedia awards program · Dept. of Fun · 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 · Merchandise · Administrators · Babel · Culture · Games · Humor · Mottoes

Related communities

Tip of the day

It is proper "Wikiquette" (WI-kee-ket) to sign your messages on talk pages. This prevents readers from confusing your posts with those by other users. To sign a message, move the cursor to the end of the message, and then with your mouse click on the sig icon () in the toolbar at the top of the edit box. This inserts the signature code (~~~~) where the cursor is. You can also type this code in manually instead. When you save the page, the code you inserted will be converted to your signature followed by a date stamp. To sign without a date stamp, use three tildes (~~~) instead.

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